Veronika Váňová, Tallinn University of Technology, EE

The presentation of on-going research addresses the topic of trust in HRI. Its aim is to investigate if and how simple anthropomorphic features influence the level of trust in non-humanoid robots. Trusting a robot is seen as necessary for successful human-robot interaction (HRI). Trust in HRI can be understood simply as reliance of the human on the robot’s abilities. This instrumentalist view can be overcome by a phenomenological-social approach, which sees trust as implicitly present in any social relation, prior to any conscious decision to trust the other. Tempered anthropomorphism is unavoidable and needed for developing trust in robots, but should it be reinforced by robot designers, and if yes, through which means and to what extent? A balance should be found in robotic design in order to make robots more trustworthy; this may rely on a number of factors, such as the robot’s performance and attributes, environment and the human’s characteristics and abilities. The methodology of this research project stems from experimental philosophy. Participants will be presented with a written description of two different human-robot interaction scenarios accompanied by pictures. The described scenarios are meant to question the participants’ trust in the robot’s abilities. The participants will then be asked to evaluate the trustworthiness of the robot. The text and pictures will vary in the tested anthropomorphic features. The chosen methodology aims to provide a first insight into the described research question and also contribute to the discussion on experimental philosophy’s research methodology.