Every Tool in Its Place: Interaction and Collaboration with Robotic Drawers

In this study, we examined how participants (N = 20) interacted and collaborated with a set of robotic drawers to accomplish a building task. The drawers’ behavior varied along two variables — proactive/reactive and expressive/nonexpressive motions. The results of our study indicated that participants considered an expressive robot to be more involved and interested in the interaction. They also found that while proactive or expressive robots could dominate the interaction, proactivity might negatively affect the participants’ perception of their social status relative to that of the robot’s, while expressiveness did not. This shows the importance of utilizing expressive movements when designing robots that collaborate with human users.