Transparent Interaction Based Learning for Human-Robot Collaboration

The number of collaborative robots that perform different tasks in close proximity to humans is increasing. Previous studies showed that enabling non-expert users to program a cobot reduces the cost of robot maintenance and reprogramming. Since this approach is based on an interaction between the cobot and human partners, in this study, we investigate whether making this interaction more transparent can improve the interaction and lead to better performance for non-expert users. To evaluate the proposed methodology, an experiment with 67 participants is conducted. The obtained results show that providing explanation leads to higher performance, in terms of efficiency and efficacy, i.e., the number of times the task is completed without teaching a wrong instruction to the cobot is two times higher when explanations are provided. In addition, providing explanation also increases users’ satisfaction and trust in working with the cobot.