A recently published study evaluated people’s confidence when collaborating with sighted and blind robots of the same species. Evidence suggests that humans may not need humanoid machines to trust and work with them. Instead, they seem to cooperate even better with machine-like machines that don’t have eyes.

Since humans are collaborative species, eyes are a critical element of human social life because they communicate intentions and allow the interaction partner to read and adapt to those intentions. It could be said, then, that the eye gaze guides human actions in a predictable way, but how equally important can the eyes be when it comes to human-machine collaboration?

“Cobots” are collaborative robots designed to assist humans in routine or dangerous tasks, such as in the industrial or medical sectors. Some cobots have eyes and a more anthropomorphic appearance to enhance the naturalness of their interactions with humans. For example, Rethink Robotics has included eyes as a feature on Baxter and Sawyer robots to increase user comfort.

Artur Pilacinski and team used a sample of 38 participants aged 18 to 42 and analyzed subjective and objective parameters (heart rate, pupil size, and task duration) to assess people’s level of confidence in eye cooperation and the blind. similar work with eyes.

According to the article, Robot eyes do not have this feature. Keeping an eye on collaborative robots provides marginally higher user confidence but lower performance.” helion, but respondents seem to report a little more confidence in robots with eyes. , performed the task faster and showed larger pupil size when interacting with the eyeless robots (a possible indication of greater interest in the object).

The data seems to suggest that humans may not need humanoid machines to trust and work with them. Instead, they seem to cooperate better with machine-like machines that don’t have eyes.

“We concluded that the Cobot’s gaze might not be that important for manual collaboration,” says Pilacinski, noting that “objective measures such as task completion time and student responses suggest more comfortable collaboration with eyeless robots.”

The findings of a team of researchers from the Ruhr University Bochum (Germany), the University of Coimbra and the University of Tras os Montes y Alto Douro (Portugal) are consistent with recent suggestions that anthropomorphism may in fact be a detrimental feature of co-working robots. . Source