Estimating and Influencing User Mental Models of a Robot's Perceptual Capabilities: Initial Development and Pilot Study

People develop mental models of robots to improve their interactions with them, but predictions from these models are not always accurate. Robots often fail to communicate their capabilities, especially perceptual capabilities---i.e., what they can sense and understand about the world. This paper describes ongoing preliminary work [8] towards enabling robots to autonomously estimate and influence human beliefs about robot perceptual capabilities. A custom-designed, web-based game is being used to establish feasibility and guide ongoing work. Our approach is discussed along with results from a pilot study.