Initiating interactions in order to get help: Effects of social framing on people's responses to robots' requests for assistance

Robots often need to ask humans for help, for instance to complete a human component in a larger task or to recover from an unforeseen error. In this paper, we explore how robots can initiate interactions with people in order to ask for help. We discuss a study in which a robot initiated interaction with a participant by producing either an acoustic signal or a verbal greeting. Thereafter, the robot produced a gesture in order to request help in performing a task. We investigate the effect that social framing by means of a verbal greeting may have on people's attention to the robot, on their recognition of the robot's actions and intention, and on their willingness to help. The results show that social framing, in contrast to other methods for getting a person's continued attention, is effective and increases how friendly the robot appears. However, it has little influence on people's willingness to assist the robot, which rather depends on the activities people are engaged in, and on the readability of the robot's request.