Exploring Theory of Mind for Human-Robot Collaboration

The ability to impute mental states to oneself or others, or Theory of Mind (ToM), has been intrinsically linked to trust between humans. However, less is known about how a robot mimicking ToM affects users’ trust and behaviour. We explore this through an online study, where we compare three robot personas in a cooperative maze navigation task: one neutral, one that explains its reasoning in technical terms, and one that mimics ToM. We show that ToM influences human decision-making behaviour and trust in a way that makes it more appropriate with respect to the competencies of the robot. This is key for human-robot collaboration and adoption of robotics moving forward.