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Main Authors: Violette, Andrew, Wu, Zhanxin, Nishimura, Haruki, Itkina, Masha, Rocha, Leticia Priebe, Zolotas, Mark, Hoffman, Guy, Kress-Gazit, Hadas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08821
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author Violette, Andrew
Wu, Zhanxin
Nishimura, Haruki
Itkina, Masha
Rocha, Leticia Priebe
Zolotas, Mark
Hoffman, Guy
Kress-Gazit, Hadas
author_facet Violette, Andrew
Wu, Zhanxin
Nishimura, Haruki
Itkina, Masha
Rocha, Leticia Priebe
Zolotas, Mark
Hoffman, Guy
Kress-Gazit, Hadas
contents Robots fail, potentially leading to a loss in the robot's perceived reliability (PR), a measure correlated with trustworthiness. In this study we examine how various kinds of failures affect the PR of the robot differently, and how this measure recovers without explicit social repair actions by the robot. In a preregistered and controlled online video study, participants were asked to predict a robot's success in a pick-and-place task. We examined manipulation failures (slips), freezing (lapses), and three types of incorrect picked objects or place goals (mistakes). Participants were shown one of 11 videos -- one of five types of failure, one of five types of failure followed by a successful execution in the same video, or a successful execution video. This was followed by two additional successful execution videos. Participants bet money either on the robot or on a coin toss after each video. People's betting patterns along with a qualitative analysis of their survey responses highlight that mistakes are less damaging to PR than slips or lapses, and some mistakes are even perceived as successes. We also see that successes immediately following a failure have the same effect on PR as successes without a preceding failure. Finally, we show that successful executions recover PR after a failure. Our findings highlight which robot failures are in higher need of repair in a human-robot interaction, and how trust could be recovered by robot successes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_08821
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Impact of Different Failures on a Robot's Perceived Reliability
Violette, Andrew
Wu, Zhanxin
Nishimura, Haruki
Itkina, Masha
Rocha, Leticia Priebe
Zolotas, Mark
Hoffman, Guy
Kress-Gazit, Hadas
Robotics
Robots fail, potentially leading to a loss in the robot's perceived reliability (PR), a measure correlated with trustworthiness. In this study we examine how various kinds of failures affect the PR of the robot differently, and how this measure recovers without explicit social repair actions by the robot. In a preregistered and controlled online video study, participants were asked to predict a robot's success in a pick-and-place task. We examined manipulation failures (slips), freezing (lapses), and three types of incorrect picked objects or place goals (mistakes). Participants were shown one of 11 videos -- one of five types of failure, one of five types of failure followed by a successful execution in the same video, or a successful execution video. This was followed by two additional successful execution videos. Participants bet money either on the robot or on a coin toss after each video. People's betting patterns along with a qualitative analysis of their survey responses highlight that mistakes are less damaging to PR than slips or lapses, and some mistakes are even perceived as successes. We also see that successes immediately following a failure have the same effect on PR as successes without a preceding failure. Finally, we show that successful executions recover PR after a failure. Our findings highlight which robot failures are in higher need of repair in a human-robot interaction, and how trust could be recovered by robot successes.
title Impact of Different Failures on a Robot's Perceived Reliability
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08821