Effects of Predictive Robot Eyes on Trust and Task Performance in an Industrial Cooperation Task

Industrial cobots can perform variable action sequences. For human-robot interaction (HRI) this can have detrimental effects, as the robot's actions can be difficult to predict. In human interaction, eye gaze intuitively directs attention and communicates subsequent actions. Whether this mechanism can benefit HRI, too, is not well understood. This study investigated the impact of anthropomorphic eyes as directional cues in robot design. 42 participants worked on two subsequent tasks in an embodied HRI with a Sawyer robot. The study used a between-subject design and presented either anthropomorphic eyes, arrows or a black screen as control condition on the robot's display. Results showed that neither directional stimuli nor the anthropomorphic design in particular led to increased trust. But anthropomorphic robot eyes improved the prediction speed, whereas this effect could not be found for non-anthropomorphic cues (arrows). Anthropomorphic eyes therefore seem to be better suitable for an implementation on an industrial robot.