Errare humanum est: Erroneous robots in human-robot interaction
Abstract
Perfect memory, strong reasoning abilities and flawless performance are typical cognitive traits associated with robots. In contrast, forgetting and erroneous reasoning are typical cognitive patterns of humans. This discrepancy may fundamentally affect the way how robots and humans interact and collaborate together and is today still little explored. In this paper, we investigate the effect of differences between erroneous and perfect robots in a competitive scenario in which humans and robots solve reasoning tasks and memorize numbers. Participants are randomly assigned to one of two groups: in the first group they interact with a perfect, flawless robot, while in the second, they interact with a human-like robot with occasional errors and imperfect memorizing abilities. Participants rate attitude, sympathy, and attributes of the robot in a questionnaire and we measure their task performance. The results show that the erroneous robot triggered more positive emotions but lead to a lower human performance than the perfect one. Effects of both conditions on the group of students with and without technical background are reported.
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Handling unrecognized utterances gracefully is particularly important for chatbots because people generally perceive robots as intelligent and may have less tolerance for mistakes.
“Handling unrecognized utterances gracefully is particularly important for chatbots because people generally perceive robots as intelligent and may have less tolerance for mistakes.61,62”
From A chatbot for hypertension self-management support: user-centered design, development, and usability testing (2023) · cites this paper as [61]
Erroneous agents are perceived as less reliable which negatively affects task performance.
“Erroneous agents are also perceived as less reliable which negatively affects task performance.61,62”
From A chatbot for hypertension self-management support: user-centered design, development, and usability testing (2023) · cites this paper as [61]
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Leo, X., & Huh, Y. E. (2020) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2020.106520 · Cited by 261 · see citing works
To err is robot: how humans assess and act toward an erroneous social robot
Mirnig, N., Stollnberger, G., Miksch, M., Stadler, S., Giuliani, M., & Tscheligi, M. (2017) · Frontiers in Robotics and AI · doi:10.3389/frobt.2017.00021 · Cited by 244 · see citing works
The effect of social presence and chatbot errors on trust
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My Bad! Repairing Intelligent Voice Assistant Errors Improves Interaction
Cuadra, A., Li, S., Lee, H., Cho, J., & Ju, W. (2021) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3449101 · Cited by 52 · see citing works
Griffin, A. C., Khairat, S., Bailey, S. C., & Chung, A. E. (2023) · JAMIA Open · doi:10.1093/jamiaopen/ooad073 · Cited by 46 · see citing works
- Authors
- Ragni, M., Rudenko, A., Kuhnert, B., & Arras, K. O.
- Affiliations
- University of Freiburg (DE)
- Venue
- 2016 25th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2016-08
- Pages
- 501-506
- ISSN
- 1944-9437 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2557118676
- Cited by
- 70
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 4
- FWCI
- 5.62
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- IEEE RO-MAN (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › AI in Service Interactions
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Speech and dialogue systems
- Keywords
- human-robot interaction, robot errors, human-robot collaboration, human-robot competition, human performance, memory, reasoning, technical background
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