Evaluation of Perceived Intelligence for a Collaborative Manipulator Sharing its Workspace with a Human Operator

This paper studies the perception of robot intelligence for a manipulator that shares its workspace with a human operator, while the two execute independent tasks. Four different motion planning algorithms were employed to plan the robot motion in four subsequent experimental sets for 48 participants, and the order with which these algorithms were used was changed, obtaining all possible combinations. While guaranteeing safety, each of the four algorithms exhibited a different level of adaptability and reactivity, in terms of real-time motion planning abilities and of speed reduction based on heart rate feedback. We analyzed how perceived intelligence was influenced by the employed algorithm, by the order of execution and by the previous experience of the participants working with robots. In conclusion, perceived intelligence resulted being significantly lower in the first experimental set compared to the following ones, which showed a positive effect of habituation on perceived intelligence. On the other hand, neither the use of different motion planning algorithms nor the previous participants’ experience significantly influenced perceived intelligence.