Trust in Shared-Space Collaborative Robots: Shedding Light on the Human Brain

Background Industry 4.0 is currently underway allowing for improved manufacturing processes that leverage the collective advantages of human and robot agents. Consideration of trust can improve the quality and safety in such shared-space human-robot collaboration environments. Objective The use of physiological response to monitor and understand trust is currently limited due to a lack of knowledge on physiological indicators of trust. This study examines neural responses to trust within a shared-workcell human-robot collaboration task as well as discusses the use of granular and multimodal perspectives to study trust. Methods Sixteen sex-balanced participants completed a surface finishing task in collaboration with a UR10 collaborative robot. All participants underwent robot reliability conditions and robot assistance level conditions. Brain activation and connectivity using functional near infrared spectroscopy, subjective responses, and performance were measured throughout the study. Results Significantly, increased neural activation was observed in response to faulty robot behavior within the medial and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). A similar trend was observed for the anterior PFC, primary motor cortex, and primary visual cortex. Faulty robot behavior also resulted in reduced functional connectivity strengths throughout the brain. Discussion These findings implicate regions in the prefrontal cortex along with specific connectivity patterns as signifiers of distrusting conditions. The neural response may be indicative of how trust is influenced, measured, and manifested for human-robot collaboration that requires active teaming. Application Neuroergonomic response metrics can reveal new perspectives on trust in automation that subjective responses alone are not able to provide.