Event
Special Robotics Seminar: Alan Wagner, "Exploring Human-Robot Trust"
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
11:00 a.m.
1146 AV Williams Bldg
Ania Picard
301 405 4358
appicard@umd.edu
Special Robotics Seminar
Exploring Human-Robot Trust during Emergency Evacuation: Insights from the First 1600 Subject s
Alan Wagner
Senior Research Scientist
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Abstract
Robots have the potential to save lives during emergency evacuations. Fires in crowded places, such as nightclubs, have claimed more than a hundred lives in a matter of minutes. Moreover, the number of environments demanding quick evacuation is growing. Globally, the number of buildings over 200 meters tall has increased from 21 in 1980 to 935 in 2014.
Ideally, in situ guide robots could autonomously lead victims to safety. But will people follow these robots? Over the past several years we have examined the challenges of creating a robot which people trust enough to follow during an evacuation. In a recent experiment participants interacted with a robot which led them to a meeting room to perform a nominal task. During the task an unexpected (to the participant) emergency occurred and the robot offered guidance out of the building. Artificial smoke and fire alarms were used to add a sense of urgency.
The results of these experiments were surprising and differed from the predictions of several prominent robotics and human-robot interaction researchers. Our research begins with a game-theoretic conceptualization of trust and builds from the resulting representations to suggest new methods for defining trust, trust calibration, and trust repair. We present results on these and other trust related topics as well as avenues for potential future research.
Biography
Alan Wagner currently holds a position as a senior research scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology’s Research Institute and is a member of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines. His research interest include the development of algorithms that allow a robot to create categories of models, or stereotypes, of its interactive partners, creating robots with the capacity to recognize situations that justify the use of deception and to act deceptively, and methods for representing and reasoning about trust. Application areas for these interests range from military to healthcare. Dr. Wagner’s research has won several awards including being selected for by the Air Force Young Investigator Program. His research on deception has gained significant notoriety in the media resulting in articles in the Wall Street Journal, New Scientist Magazine, the Journal of Science, and described as the 13th most important invention of 2010 by Time Magazine. His research has also won awards within the human-robot interaction community, such as the best paper award at RO-MAN 2007. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology.
