Humans sensitive to the gaze of robots

The looks are important, and can be distracting, even if a robot is staring at you: how true this is is shown by the experiment carried out by researchers of the Italian Institute of Technology (Iit) led by Agnieszka Wykowska and published in the journal Science Robotics. The result indicates that the gaze of a robot can influence the decision-making processes of human beings in the midst of a competitive game.

"We know that robots will be increasingly present in our lives and for this reason it is important to try to better understand how we humans interact with them," Wykowska, head of the IIT Social Cognition in Human-Robot Interaction laboratory, told ANSA. and the European InStance project.

“The look - he continued - is one of the many elements of communication that we use between us humans and whose meaning varies a lot according to how and when it is used. For example, but not always, a reproach can be effective on a child. With this experiment we wanted to understand how the gaze of a robot could influence our behavior during a competitive game against the same robot ".

In the experiment, the researchers made a human (more than 40 alternated) and a robot (an iCub humanoid) sit opposite each other to play the Chicken Game, one of the most used games in these experiments. essentially the analogue of what the protagonists of Burnt Youth, the '55 film with James Dean, did. The game consists of a car race, one thrown against the other: the first to swerve loses (and becomes a cowardly chicken), if no one swerves both lose (by dying). Obviously the game was in virtual form and during the tests the neuronal activity of humans was monitored with electroencephalography.

"We observed that all humans, no big differences based on gender or age, were slowed down if the robot stared at them at key moments in which they had to make the decision," said Wykowska. The data indicates that gazing involved greater cognitive effort for humans. “Beyond the contribution that this study can provide for the development of robot poker players - concluded the researcher - our goal is to better understand which mechanisms are activated in our brain by the actions of robots, for example to avoid causing distractions. These are all fundamental elements for improving robots designed, for example, to help the elderly, or to give support in therapies with children with problems, for example with autism ".