C. Breazeal, C. Kidd, A. L. Thomaz, G. Hoffman, M. Berlin

Abstract

Nonverbal communication plays an important role in coordinating teammates’ actions for collaborative activities. In this paper, we explore the impact of non-verbal social cues and behavior on task performance by a human-robot team. We report our results from an experiment where na¨ıve human subjects guide a robot to perform a physical task using speech and gesture. Both self-report via questionnaire and behavioral analysis of video offer evidence to support our hypothesis that implicit non-verbal communication positively impacts humanrobot task performance with respect to understandability of the robot, efficiency of task performance, and robustness to errors that arise from miscommunication.