The Effects of Robot Eye Gaze On Task Performance

A significant amount of research has been conducted involving human-robot interaction and eye gaze. This study aimed to see the effects of robot eye gaze on task performance. Admoni et al. (2014) performed an experiment where a robot asked participants to select the shape in the given color zone based on verbal instruction. Three different gaze conditions went along with the verbal instruction: Congruent Gaze (the gaze aligned with the shape and color zone the robot was referring to), Incongruent Gaze(the gaze did not align/was misleading), and No Gaze (the gaze did not move). They found that the congruent gaze consistently led the participants to identify the shape faster. This study replicated the work of Admoni et al. (2014) with an additional set of introduction scenarios. In one scenario, gaze cues were added during the introduction. This was to see if participants would respond faster to the first set of trials after already seeing the gaze cues before. The robot explained the task and looked at the color sections that would be referred to during the task. The robot also asked the human participant two questions and used a “human-like” gaze while asking the questions. “Human-like” in this study meant slightly looking away while asking the question, mimicking the eye movements a human might make. In the other introduction scenario, the gaze did not move at all. The introduction was followed by two 9-block trials, one block with a congruent gaze and one with an incongruent gaze. This was followed by 54 trials of random gaze, meaning either congruent, incongruent or with no gaze. Current results suggest that using gaze cues in the introduction dialogue leads participants to respond faster in the block trials. They also suggest that participants generally respond faster during the random trials when the congruent gaze cue is present.