Technical Transparency for Robot Navigation Through AR Visualizations

Abstract

Since robots can facilitate our everyday life by assisting us in basic tasks, they are continuously integrated into our life. However, for a robot to establish itself, a user must accept and trust its doing. As the saying goes, you don't trust things you don't understand. Therefore, the base hypothesis of this paper is that providing technical transparency for users can increase understanding of the robot architecture and its behaviors as well as trust and acceptance towards it. In this work, we aim to improve a robot's understanding, trust, and acceptance by displaying transparent visualizations of its intention and perception in augmented reality. We conducted a user study where robot navigation with certain interruptions was demonstrated to two groups. The first group did not have AR visualizations displayed during the first demonstration; in the second demonstration, the visualizations were shown. The second group had the visualizations displayed throughout only one demonstration. Results showed that understanding increased with AR visualizations when prior knowledge had been gained in previous demonstrations.