Coordinating With a Robot Partner Affects Neural Processing Related to Action MonitoringShow others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: Frontiers in Neurorobotics, ISSN 1662-5218, Vol. 15, article id 686010
Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Robots start to play a role in our social landscape, and they are progressively becoming responsive, both physically and socially. It begs the question of how humans react to and interact with robots in a coordinated manner and what the neural underpinnings of such behavior are. This exploratory study aims to understand the differences in human-human and human-robot interactions at a behavioral level and from a neurophysiological perspective. For this purpose, we adapted a collaborative dynamical paradigm from the literature. We asked 12 participants to hold two corners of a tablet while collaboratively guiding a ball around a circular track either with another participant or a robot. In irregular intervals, the ball was perturbed outward creating an artificial error in the behavior, which required corrective measures to return to the circular track again. Concurrently, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG). In the behavioral data, we found an increased velocity and positional error of the ball from the track in the human-human condition vs. human-robot condition. For the EEG data, we computed event-related potentials. We found a significant difference between human and robot partners driven by significant clusters at fronto-central electrodes. The amplitudes were stronger with a robot partner, suggesting a different neural processing. All in all, our exploratory study suggests that coordinating with robots affects action monitoring related processing. In the investigated paradigm, human participants treat errors during human-robot interaction differently from those made during interactions with other humans. These results can improve communication between humans and robot with the use of neural activity in real-time.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Frontiers Media SA , 2021. Vol. 15, article id 686010
Keywords [en]
human-robot interaction, social neuroscience, joint action, ERP, EEG, embodied cognition, action monitoring
National Category
Robotics and automation
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-301830DOI: 10.3389/fnbot.2021.686010ISI: 000690873200001PubMedID: 34456705Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85113457169OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-301830DiVA, id: diva2:1594330
Note
QC 20210915
2021-09-152021-09-152025-02-09Bibliographically approved