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Gracefully mitigating breakdowns in robotic services

Published: 02 March 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Robots that operate in the real world will make mistakes. Thus, those who design and build systems will need to understand how best to provide ways for robots to mitigate those mistakes. Building on diverse research literatures, we consider how to mitigate breakdowns in services provided by robots. Expectancy-setting strategies forewarn people of a robot's limitations so people will expect mistakes. Recovery strategies, including apologies, compensation, and options for the user, aim to reduce the negative consequence of breakdowns. We tested these strategies in an online scenario study with 317 participants. A breakdown in robotic service had severe impact on evaluations of the service and the robot, but forewarning and recovery strategies reduced the negative impact of the breakdown. People's orientation toward services influenced which recovery strategy worked best. Those with a relational orientation responded best to an apology; those with a utilitarian orientation responded best to compensation. We discuss robotic service design to mitigate service problems.

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    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    HRI '10: Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction
    March 2010
    400 pages
    ISBN:9781424448937

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    Published: 02 March 2010

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    Author Tags

    1. error recovery
    2. human-robot interaction
    3. robot breakdown
    4. robot error
    5. service recovery
    6. services
    7. social robot

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    HRI '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 26 of 124 submissions, 21%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 268 of 1,124 submissions, 24%

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    • (2024)Bridging HRI Theory and Practice: Design Guidelines for Robot Communication in Dairy FarmingProceedings of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3610977.3634991(137-146)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2024
    • (2023)Design Metaphors for Understanding User Expectations of Socially Interactive Robot EmbodimentsACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/355048912:2(1-41)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2023
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