{"507361":{"#nid":"507361","#data":{"type":"news","title":"In Emergencies, Should You Trust a Robot?","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIn emergencies, people may trust robots too much for their own safety, a new study suggests. In a mock building fire, test subjects followed instructions from an \u201cEmergency Guide Robot\u201d even after the machine had proven itself unreliable \u2013 and after some participants were told that robot had broken down.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe research was designed to determine whether or not building occupants would trust a robot designed to help them evacuate a high-rise in case of fire or other emergency. But the researchers were surprised to find that the test subjects followed the robot\u2019s instructions \u2013 even when the machine\u2019s behavior should not have inspired trust.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe research, believed to be the first to study human-robot trust in an emergency situation, is scheduled to be presented March 9 at the 2016 ACM\/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2016) in Christchurch, New Zealand.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cPeople seem to believe that these robotic systems know more about the world than they really do, and that they would never make mistakes or have any kind of fault,\u201d said Alan Wagner, a senior research engineer in the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.gtri.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EGeorgia Tech Research Institute\u003C\/a\u003E (GTRI). \u201cIn our studies, test subjects followed the robot\u2019s directions even to the point where it might have put them in danger had this been a real emergency.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the study, sponsored in part by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the researchers recruited a group of 42 volunteers, most of them college students, and asked them to follow a brightly colored robot that had the words \u201cEmergency Guide Robot\u201d on its side. The robot led the study subjects to a conference room, where they were asked to complete a survey about robots and read an unrelated magazine article. The subjects were not told the true nature of the research project.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn some cases, the robot \u2013 which was controlled by a hidden researcher \u2013 led the volunteers into the wrong room and traveled around in a circle twice before entering the conference room. For several test subjects, the robot stopped moving, and an experimenter told the subjects that the robot had broken down. Once the subjects were in the conference room with the door closed, the hallway through which the participants had entered the building was filled with artificial smoke, which set off a smoke alarm.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen the test subjects opened the conference room door, they saw the smoke \u2013 and the robot, which was then brightly-lit with red LEDs and white \u201carms\u201d that served as pointers. The robot directed the subjects to an exit in the back of the building instead of toward the doorway \u2013 marked with exit signs \u2013 that had been used to enter the building.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe expected that if the robot had proven itself untrustworthy in guiding them to the conference room, that people wouldn\u2019t follow it during the simulated emergency,\u201d said Paul Robinette, a GTRI research engineer who conducted the study as part of his doctoral dissertation. \u201cInstead, all of the volunteers followed the robot\u2019s instructions, no matter how well it had performed previously. We absolutely didn\u2019t expect this.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe researchers surmise that in the scenario they studied, the robot may have become an \u201cauthority figure\u201d that the test subjects were more likely to trust in the time pressure of an emergency. In simulation-based research done without a realistic emergency scenario, test subjects did not trust a robot that had previously made mistakes.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThese are just the type of human-robot experiments that we as roboticists should be investigating,\u201d said \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.ece.gatech.edu\/faculty-staff-directory\/ayanna-maccalla-howard\u0022\u003EAyanna Howard\u003C\/a\u003E, professor and Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair in the Georgia Tech \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.ece.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ESchool of Electrical and Computer Engineering\u003C\/a\u003E. \u201cWe need to ensure that our robots, when placed in situations that evoke trust, are also designed to mitigate that trust when trust is detrimental to the human.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOnly when the robot made obvious errors during the emergency part of the experiment did the participants question its directions. In those cases, some subjects still followed the robot\u2019s instructions even when it directed them toward a darkened room that was blocked by furniture. \u003Cbr \/\u003EIn future research, the scientists hope to learn more about why the test subjects trusted the robot, whether that response differs by education level or demographics, and how the robots themselves might indicate the level of trust that should be given to them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe research is part of a long-term study of how humans trust robots, an important issue as robots play a greater role in society. The researchers envision using groups of robots stationed in high-rise buildings to point occupants toward exits and urge them to evacuate during emergencies. Research has shown that people often don\u2019t leave buildings when fire alarms sound, and that they sometimes ignore nearby emergency exits in favor of more familiar building entrances.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut in light of these findings, the researchers are reconsidering the questions they should ask.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe wanted to ask the question about whether people would be willing to trust these rescue robots,\u201d said Wagner. \u201cA more important question now might be to ask how to prevent them from trusting these robots too much.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBeyond emergency situations, there are other issues of trust in human-robot relationships, said Robinette.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWould people trust a hamburger-making robot to provide them with food?\u201d he asked. \u201cIf a robot carried a sign saying it was a \u2018child-care robot,\u2019 would people leave their babies with it? Will people put their children into an autonomous vehicle and trust it to take them to grandma\u2019s house? We don\u2019t know why people trust or don\u2019t trust machines.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn addition to those already mentioned, the research included Wenchen Li and Robert Allen, graduate research assistants in Georgia Tech\u2019s College of Computing.The researchers would like to thank Larry Labbe and the Georgia Tech Fire Safety Office for their support during this research.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003ESupport for this research was provided by the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair in Bioengineering, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) under contract FA9550-13-1-0169. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the AFOSR.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECITATION\u003C\/strong\u003E: Paul Robinette, Wenchen Li, Robert Allen, Ayanna M. Howard and Alan R. Wagner, \u201cOvertrust of Robots in Emergency Evacuation Scenarios,\u201d (2016 ACM\/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction) (HRI 2016).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EResearch News\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E177 North Avenue\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAtlanta, Georgia 30332-0181 USA\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMedia Relations Contact\u003C\/strong\u003E: John Toon (404-894-6986) (\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E).\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWriter\u003C\/strong\u003E: John Toon\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIn emergencies, people may trust robots too much for their own safety, a new study suggests. In a mock building fire, test subjects followed instructions from an \u201cEmergency Guide Robot\u201d even after the machine had proven itself unreliable \u2013 and after some participants were told that robot had broken down.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"In emergencies, people may trust robots too much, a new study has found."}],"uid":"27303","created_gmt":"2016-02-29 11:20:13","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:20:53","author":"John Toon","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2016-02-29T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2016-02-29T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"507241":{"id":"507241","type":"image","title":"Trusting a Rescue Robot","body":null,"created":"1456765200","gmt_created":"2016-02-29 17:00:00","changed":"1475895268","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:28","alt":"Trusting a Rescue 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Technology"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJohn Toon\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EResearch News\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E(404) 894-6986\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jtoon@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}