Robots In Emergencies: Should We Trust Robotics In Crisis? (VIDEO)

Robots and machines are continually becoming an integral part of our society. They're used for a variety of reasons, from food service to autopilots in cars. A recent study out of Georgia Tech examined a subject with robotics many of us often overlook: Should we trust robots in emergency situations?

In the study - believed to be the first of its kind - researchers took a group of 42 unknowing participants, mostly college students, to act as test subjects. They instructed them to follow an "Emergency Guide Robot" that would lead them to a conference room. Once in the room, they were asked to fill out a survey about a magazine article and robots, according to a news release.

"We expected that if the robot had proven itself untrustworthy in guiding them to the conference room, that people wouldn't follow it during the simulated emergency," said Paul Robinette, a Georgia Tech Research Institute engineer who conducted the study as part of his doctoral dissertation. "Instead, all of the volunteers followed the robot's instructions, no matter how well it had performed previously. We absolutely didn't expect this." 

In some instances, the robot would lead the group to the wrong room, guiding the participants to circle the space twice before finally leaving to enter the conference room.

In other cases, the robot - controlled by a hidden researcher - would occasionally stop moving, and an experimenter would inform the participants that it had broken down. After the participants were finally led to the conference room, the door would close and the outside hallway would will with artificial smoke, setting off a smoke alarm.

At this point, the subjects would open the door, see the smoke and the robot, and follow the robot to an exit near the back of the building. Interestingly, the path instructed by the robot contradicted the direction of the doorway used by the subjects to enter the building - a doorway clearly marked with exit signs.

"People seem to believe that these robotic systems know more about the world than they really do, and that they would never make mistakes or have any kind of fault," said Alan Wagner, a senior research engineer in the GTRI. "In our studies, test subjects followed the robot's directions even to the point where it might have put them in danger had this been a real emergency."

The researchers believe that since the robot had been viewed as some type of "authority figure" in the presented scenarios, the participants were inclined to trust its decisions in a time of need, regardless of previous malfunctions. In research done involving robots in non-emergency situations, the results were the opposite: people did not trust a robot that had previously made mistakes.

"These are just the type of human-robot experiments that we as roboticists should be investigating," said Ayanna Howard, professor and Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "We need to ensure that our robots, when placed in situations that evoke trust, are also designed to mitigate that trust when trust is detrimental to the human." 

The only time the participants questioned the robot's instructions was when obvious mistakes or malfunctions occurred during the emergency situation. However, in some instances, the subjects followed the robot even when it led them to a dark room blocked by furniture.

"We wanted to ask the question about whether people would be willing to trust these rescue robots," said Wagner. "A more important question now might be to ask how to prevent them from trusting these robots too much."

The study was intended to discover how much people trust robots as they begin to play a larger societal role. Robinette admitted that we don't know why people do or don't trust machines, and more research is needed to ensure human-robot interaction goes as intended, even in non-emergency situations.

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