Band of Brothers and Bolts: Caring About Your Robot Teammate

Abstract

It has been observed that a robot shown as suffering is enough to cause an empathic response from a person. Whether the response is a fleeting reaction with no consequences or a meaningful perspective change with associated behavior modifications is not clear. Existing work has been limited to measurements made at the end of empathy inducing experimental trials rather measurements made over time to capture consequential behavioral pattern. We report on preliminary results collected from a study that attempts to measure how the actions of a participant may be altered by empathy for a robot companion. Our findings suggest that induced empathy can in fact have a significant impact on a person's behavior to the extent that the ability to fulfill a mission may be affected.