Building and Maintaining Trust Between Humans and Guidance Robots in an Emergency

Emergency evacuations are dangerous situations for both evacuees and first responders. The use of automation in the form of guidance robots can reduce the danger to humans by both aiding evacuees and assisting first responders. This presents an interesting opportunity to explore the trust dynamic between frightened evacuees and automated robot guides. We present our work so far on designing robots to immediately generate trust as well as our initial concept of an algorithm for maintaining trust through interaction.