Title: Robot Assisted Tower Construction - A Resource Distribution Task to Study Human-Robot Collaboration and Interaction with Groups of People,
Abstract: Research on human-robot collaboration or human-robot teaming, has focused
predominantly on understanding and enabling collaboration between a single
robot and a single human. Extending human-robot collaboration research beyond
the dyad, raises novel questions about how a robot should distribute resources
among group members and about what the social and task related consequences of
the distribution are. Methodological advances are needed to allow researchers
to collect data about human robot collaboration that involves multiple people.
This paper presents Tower Construction, a novel resource distribution task that
allows researchers to examine collaboration between a robot and groups of
people. By focusing on the question of whether and how a robot's distribution
of resources (wooden blocks required for a building task) affects collaboration
dynamics and outcomes, we provide a case of how this task can be applied in a
laboratory study with 124 participants to collect data about human robot
collaboration that involves multiple humans. We highlight the kinds of insights
the task can yield. In particular we find that the distribution of resources
affects perceptions of performance, and interpersonal dynamics between human
team-members.