Maintaining trust while fixated to a rehabilitative robot

Abstract

This paper investigates the trust relationship between humans and a rehabilitation robot, the RoboTrainer. We present a study in which participants let the robot guide their arms through a series of preset coordinates in a 3D space. Each participant interact with the robot twice, one time where participants hold on to the robotic arm, and a second time where participants are fixated to the robotic arm. Our findings show that in general participants did not feel more insecure when fixated to the robot. However, when the robot arm moves close to participants and enter their intimate space, or when the robot moves out into an outer position participants display significantly more signs of fear opposed to when the robot arm is in a normal position.