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If a person starts abusing a robot, will other people intervene if the robot’s friends show sadness?
That was the objective of a new study by researchers at the Interactive Machines Group at Yale University.
As robots become increasingly present in public and work spaces, in roles such as security guards and baristas, harm from humans is surprisingly common. Robot researchers say photos of people punching, kicking, even beheading these machines are popular online.
HitchBOT, a robot attempting a cross-country trek from New York to California in 2015, never got beyond Philadelphia, where it was dismembered by an unknown assailant. (Offers to repair the droid poured in, proving that all is not lost for humanity.) A few years later, a robot in San Francisco that had been programmed to prevent homeless encampments was attacked, perhaps unsurprisingly, by homeless people themselves.
“It could be that some people are threatened by technology, but their behavior is also driven by curiosity,” says Marynel Vázquez, assistant professor of computer science at Yale and co-author of the study. “They want to see what will happen.” She adds: “The more we understand human/robot interaction, the more we will be able to design these machines so they can work better for people.”
