Technical Transparency for Robot Navigation Through AR Visualizations

What is it about?

Do visualizations improve trust, understanding and acceptance of a robot? We conducted a study in which we investigated to what extent visualizations in augmented reality can increase the understanding, trust and acceptance of users towards a robot. For this purpose, visualizations of a robot's functionality were created in augmented reality (AR) and presented to a group of users* during a robot demonstration. In the demonstration, the robot was asked to solve a navigation task. The visualizations showed the reasons when the robot behaved unexpectedly, such as when it had to re-plan, collided with an object, or failed to reach its destination. The participants were split into two groups, the first group saw the navigations first without and then with the visualizations. A second group only saw the navigations with visualizations. The study shows that when the AR visualizations were shown, they could better understand the robot. However, the improvement could also be due to repeated viewing of the demonstration. This would need to be tested in further studies.

Featured Image

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This work is essential as robots become more and more ubiquitous in our daily lifes. Robots can assist in basic tasks in care, industry or in the household, for example. But for a robot to be accepted in society, we users must be able to trust the robot. And that can only be done by understanding it.