Robots need humans in the loop to improve the hopefulness of disaster survivors

In this exploratory study, participants taking cover from a simulated earthquake interacted with a search-and-rescue robot that assumed one of four different identities, distinguished by varying degrees of autonomy, and whose communications were either clear or noisy. Results showed that identities with low autonomy elicited greater hopefulness from participants than identities with high autonomy. Discussion focuses on design recommendations for search-and-rescue robots, and on the design of immersive HRI experiments.