research-article

Engaging robots: easing complex human-robot teamwork using backchanneling

Authors:

Sigurdur O. Adalgeirsson,

Pamela J. Hinds,

Cynthia BreazealAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '13: Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work

Pages 1555 - 1566

https://doi.org/10.1145/2441776.2441954

Published: 23 February 2013 Publication History

Abstract

People are increasingly working with robots in teams and recent research has focused on how human-robot teams function, but little attention has yet been paid to the role of social signaling behavior in human-robot teams. In a controlled experiment, we examined the role of backchanneling and task complexity on team functioning and perceptions of the robots' engagement and competence. Based on results from 73 participants interacting with autonomous humanoid robots as part of a human-robot team (one participant, one confederate, and three robots), we found that when robots used backchanneling team functioning improved and the robots were seen as more engaged. Ironically, the robots using backchanneling were perceived as less competent than those that did not. Our results suggest that backchanneling plays an important role in human-robot teams and that the design and implementation of robots for human-robot teams may be more effective if backchanneling capability is provided.

Supplementary Material

JPG File (cscw0586-file3.jpg)

Download
19.77 KB

suppl.mov (cscw0586-file3.mov)

Supplemental video

Download
23.18 MB

References

[1]

ARToolKit. {Software}. Available from: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/.

[2]

Aviezer, H., et al., Angry, Disgusted, or Afraid? Psychological Science, 2008. 19(7): p. 724--732.

[3]

Barsade, S. G., The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and its Influence on Group Behavior. Administrative Science Quarterly, 2002. 47(4): p. 644--675.

[4]

Barsade, S. G. and D. E. Gibson, Why does affect matter in organizations? The Academy of Management Perspectives, 2007. 21(1): p. 36--59.

[5]

Bethel, C. L. and R. R. Murphy, Affective expression in appearance constrained robots, in Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI/SIGART conference on Human-robot interaction. 2006, ACM: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. p. 327--328.

Digital Library

[6]

Bethel, C. L. and R. R. Murphy, Non-facial/non-verbal methods of affective expression as applied to robot-assisted victim assessment, in Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction. 2007, ACM: Arlington, Virginia, USA. p. 287--294.

Digital Library

[7]

Bickmore, T. W. and R. W. Picard, Towards caring machines, in CHI '04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. 2004, ACM: Vienna, Austria. p. 1489--1492.

Digital Library

[8]

Breazeal, C., et al. Effects of nonverbal communication on efficiency and robustness in human-robot teamwork. in Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2005. (IROS 2005). 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on. 2005.

[9]

Breazeal, C. and B. Scassellati. How to build robots that make friends and influence people. in Intelligent Robots and Systems, 1999. IROS '99. Proceedings. 1999 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on. 1999.

[10]

Breazeal, C. L., Designing sociable robots. 2004: The MIT Press.

Digital Library

[11]

Bruce, A., I. Nourbakhsh, and R. Simmons. The role of expressiveness and attention in human-robot interaction. in Robotics and Automation, 2002. Proceedings. ICRA '02. IEEE International Conference on. 2002.

[12]

Brunken, R., J. L. Plass, and D. Leutner, Direct Measurement of Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning. Educational Psychologist, 2003. 38(1): p. 53--61.

[13]

Campbell, D. J., Task complexity: A review and analysis. The Academy of Management Review, 1988. 13(1): p. 40--52.

[14]

CARMEN. Robot Navigation Toolkit. Available from: http://carmen.sourceforge.net/.

[15]

Casper, J. and R. R. Murphy, Human-robot interactions during the robot-assisted urban search and rescue response at the World Trade Center. Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on, 2003. 33(3): p. 367--385.

Digital Library

[16]

Cereproc. {Software}. Available from http://www.cereproc.com/.

[17]

Clark, H. H. and S. A. Brennan, Grounding in Communication, in Perspectives on socially shared cognition, L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, and S. D. Teasley, Editors. 1991, APA Book.: Washington.

[18]

Coan, J. A. and J. M. Gottman, The Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF), in Handbook of emotion elicitation and assessment., J. A. Coan and J. J. B. Allen, Editors. 2007, New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press. p. 267--285.

[19]

Dennis, A. R. and S. T. Kinney, Testing Media Richness Theory in the New Media: The Effects of Cues, Feedback, and Task Equivocality. Information Systems Research, 1998. 9(3): p. 256--274.

Digital Library

[20]

Earley, P. C., Influence of information, choice and task complexity upon goal acceptance, performance, and personal goals. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1985. 70(3): p. 481--491.

[21]

Felps, W., T. R. Mitchell, and E. Byington, How, when, and why bad apples spoil the barrel: Negative group members and dysfunctional groups. Research in organizational behavior, 2006. 27: p. 175--222.

[22]

Fincannon, T., et al. Evidence of the need for social intelligence in rescue robots. in 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. 2004. Sendai, Japan: IEEE.

[23]

Fong, T., I. Nourbakhsh, and K. Dautenhahn, A survey of socially interactive robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2003. 42(3): p. 143--166.

[24]

Gockley, R., R. Simmons, and J. Forlizzi. Modeling Affect in Socially Interactive Robots. in Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2006. ROMAN 2006. The 15th IEEE International Symposium on. 2006.

[25]

Jacob, M., et al., Gestonurse: a robotic surgical nurse for handling surgical instruments in the operating room. Journal of Robotic Surgery, 2012. 6(1): p. 53--63.

[26]

Johnson, C., Gender, Legitimate Authority, and Leader-Subordinate Conversations. American Sociological Review, 1994. 59(1): p. 122--135.

[27]

Jones, H. and P. Hinds. Extreme work teams: using swat teams as a model for coordinating distributed robots. in ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, CSCW'02. 2002. New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.: ACM.

Digital Library

[28]

Jung, M. F., J. Chong, and L. J. Leifer. Group Hedonic Balance and Pair Programming Performance: Affective Interaction Dynamics as indicators of Performance. in ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'12). 2012. Austin, Texas, USA.

Digital Library

[29]

Kahn, W. A., Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work. Academy of Management Journal, 1990. 33(4): p. 692--724.

[30]

Keltner, D. and J. Haidt, Social functions of emotions, in Emotions: Currrent issues and future directions, T. J. M. G. A. Bonanno, Editor. 2001, Guilford Press: New York, NY, US. p. 192--213.

[31]

Knutson, B., Facial expressions of emotion influence interpersonal trait inferences. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 1996. 20(3): p. 165--182.

[32]

Lee, K. M., et al., Can Robots Manifest Personality?: An Empirical Test of Personality Recognition, Social Responses, and Social Presence in Human-Robot Interaction. Journal of Communication, 2006. 56(4): p. 754--772.

[33]

Lewis, K., Measuring transactive memory systems in the field: Scale development and validation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 2003. 88(4): p. 587--604.

[34]

Liu, C., et al. Generation of nodding, head tilting and eye gazing for human-robot dialogue interaction. in 7th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). 2012. Kyoto, Japan: IEEE.

Digital Library

[35]

Maynard, D. C. and M. D. Hakel, Effects of objective and subjective task complexity on performance. Human Performance; Human Performance, 1997. 10(4): p. 303--330.

[36]

Murphy, R. R., Human-robot interaction in rescue robotics. Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, IEEE Transactions on, 2004. 34(2): p. 138--153.

Digital Library

[37]

Murphy, R. R. and J. L. Burke, Up from the Rubble: Lessons Learned about HRI from Search and Rescue. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2005. 49(3): p. 437--441.

[38]

Murphy, R. R., et al., Emotion-based control of cooperating heterogeneous mobile robots. Robotics and Automation, IEEE Transactions on, 2002. 18(5): p. 744--757.

[39]

Nass, C. and B. Reeves, The media equation: How people treat computers, televisions, and new media as real people and places. 1996, Cambridge University Press.

Digital Library

[40]

Parasuraman, R. and C. A. Miller, Trust and etiquette in high-criticality automated systems. Commun. ACM, 2004. 47(4): p. 51--55.

Digital Library

[41]

Pasupathi, M., et al., Responsive Listening in Long- Married Couples: A Psycholinguistic Perspective. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 1999. 23(2): p. 173--193.

[42]

Rose, R., M. Scheutz, and P. Schermerhorn. Empirical investigations into the believability of robot affect. in Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium. 2008.

[43]

Schegloff, E. A., Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis I. Vol. 1. 2007: Cambridge Univ Pr.

[44]

Shah, J., et al., Improved human-robot team performance using chaski, a human-inspired plan execution system, in Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Human-robot interaction. 2011, ACM: Lausanne, Switzerland. p. 29--36.

Digital Library

[45]

Sidner, C. L., et al., Explorations in engagement for humans and robots. Artificial Intelligence, 2005. 166(1): p. 140--164.

Digital Library

[46]

Sidner, C. L., et al., The effect of head-nod recognition in human-robot conversation, in Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI/SIGART conference on Human-robot interaction. 2006, ACM: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. p. 290--296.

Digital Library

[47]

Sphinx, C. {Software}. Available from: http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/.

[48]

Stubbs, K., P. J. Hinds, and D. Wettergreen, Autonomy and Common Ground in Human-Robot Interaction: A Field Study. Intelligent Systems, IEEE, 2007. 22(2): p. 42--50.

Digital Library

[49]

Takayama, L., V. Groom, and C. Nass, I'm sorry, Dave: i'm afraid i won't do that: social aspects of human-agent conflict, in Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems. 2009, ACM: Boston, MA, USA. p. 2099--2108.

Digital Library

[50]

van Gerven, P. W. M., et al., Modality and variability as factors in training the elderly. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2006. 20(3): p. 311--320.

[51]

Vicon. {Software}. Available from: http://www.vicon.com/.

[52]

Wang, E., et al., Effects of head movement on perceptions of humanoid robot behavior, in Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI/SIGART conference on Human-robot interaction. 2006, ACM: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. p. 180--185.

Digital Library

[53]

Wang, L. and C. Chen, A Combined Optimization Method for Solving the Inverse Kinematics Problem of Mechanical Manipulators. IEEE Trans. On Robotics and Applications, 1991. 7(4): p. 489--499.

[54]

Watson, D., L. A. Clark, and A. Tellegen, Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1988. 54(6): p. 1063--1070.

[55]

Weick, K. E., The Vulnerable System: An Analysis of the Tenerife Air Disaster. Journal of Management, 1990. 16(3): p. 571--593.

[56]

Yamazaki, A., et al., Precision timing in human-robot interaction: coordination of head movement and utterance, in Proceedings of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems CHI'08. 2008, ACM: Florence, Italy. p. 131--140.

Digital Library

Cited By

Axelsson MSpitale MGunes H(2024)Robots as Mental Well-being Coaches: Design and Ethical RecommendationsACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/364345713:2(1-55)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643457
Johansen SBrophy CRittenbruch MDonovan J(2024)Characterising CSCW Research on Human-Robot CollaborationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36409998:CSCW1(1-31)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640999
Williams TMatuszek CMead RDepalma N(2024)Scarecrows in Oz: The Use of Large Language Models in HRIACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/360626113:1(1-11)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3606261
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Engaging robots: easing complex human-robot teamwork using backchanneling

Recommendations

Improving multi-robot teleoperation by inferring operator distraction
AAMAS '10: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems: volume 1 - Volume 1

A high-quality human-robot interface is essential for the success of search and rescue operations in urban environments that are too challenging for fully-autonomous operation. Teleoperating multiple robots greatly increases the complexity of the human'...
Human Coordination Dynamics with Heterogeneous Robots in a Team
HRI '16: The Eleventh ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction

Robots with different behaviors will be a part of human-robot teams in the future and will impact the overall interaction patterns of teams. In this paper, we investigate how the presence of robots affect the coordination of human-robot teams when a ...
Autonomy, Embodiment, and Obedience to Robots
HRI'15 Extended Abstracts: Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction Extended Abstracts

We conducted an HRI obedience experiment comparing an autonomous robotic authority to: (i) a remote-controlled robot, and (ii) robots of variant embodiments during a deterrent task. The results suggest that half of people will continue to perform a ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '13: Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work

February 2013

1594 pages

ISBN:9781450313315

DOI:10.1145/2441776

General Chairs:
Amy Bruckman
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
,
Scott Counts
Microsoft Research, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Cliff Lampe
University of Michigan, USA
,
Loren Terveen
University of Minnesota, USA

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 23 February 2013

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CSCW '13

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CSCW '13: Computer Supported Cooperative Work

February 23 - 27, 2013

Texas, San Antonio, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

Upcoming Conference

CSCW '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

October 18 - 22, 2025

Bergen , Norway

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

67
Total Citations
View Citations
1,074
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)94
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)12

Reflects downloads up to 21 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Axelsson MSpitale MGunes H(2024)Robots as Mental Well-being Coaches: Design and Ethical RecommendationsACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/364345713:2(1-55)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643457
Johansen SBrophy CRittenbruch MDonovan J(2024)Characterising CSCW Research on Human-Robot CollaborationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36409998:CSCW1(1-31)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640999
Williams TMatuszek CMead RDepalma N(2024)Scarecrows in Oz: The Use of Large Language Models in HRIACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/360626113:1(1-11)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3606261
Robinson FPelikan HWatanabe KDamiano LBown OVelonaki M(2023)Introduction to the Special Issue on Sound in Human-Robot InteractionACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/363218512:4(1-5)Online publication date: 13-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632185
Suguitan MDePalma NHoffman GHodgins J(2023)Face2Gesture: Translating Facial Expressions Into Robot Movements Through Shared Latent Space Neural NetworksACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3623386Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623386
Cheon E(2023)Powerful Futures: How a Big Tech Company Envisions Humans and Technologies in the Workplace of the FutureProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36101037:CSCW2(1-35)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610103
Parreira MGillet SLeite I(2023)Robot Duck Debugging: Can Attentive Listening Improve Problem Solving?Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction10.1145/3577190.3614160(527-536)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3577190.3614160
Reynolds-Cuéllar PSalazar-Gómez ACastellano GRiek LCakmak MLeite I(2023)Nature-Robot InteractionCompanion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3568294.3580034(30-39)Online publication date: 13-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3568294.3580034
Neto ICorreia FRocha FPiedade PPaiva ANicolau HCastellano GRiek LCakmak MLeite I(2023)The Robot Made Us Hear Each OtherProceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3568162.3576997(13-23)Online publication date: 13-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3568162.3576997
Kobuki SSeaborn KTokunaga SFukumori KHidaka STamura KInoue KKawahara TOtake-Mastuura M(2023)Robotic Backchanneling in Online Conversation Facilitation: A Cross-Generational Study2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309362(71-76)Online publication date: 28-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309362
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents