In Sync: Synchronization in interaction between Humans and Embodied AI Systems
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), University Warsaw
When we go for a walk with friends, we can observe that our movements unconsciously synchronize. This is a crucial aspect of human relations that is known to build trust, liking, and the feeling of connectedness and rapport. In this project, we explore if and how this effect can enhance the relationship between humans and AI systems by increasing the sense of connectedness in the formation of techno-social teams working together on a task.
To evaluate the feasibility of this approach, we plan to build a physical object representing an AI system that can bend in two dimensions to synchronize with the movements of humans. Then, we plan to conduct an initial evaluation in which we will track the upper body motion of the participants and use this data to compute the prototype movement using different transfer functions (e.g., varying the delay and amplitude of the movement).
Output
Physical prototype that employs bending for synchronization
Study results on the feasibility of establishing trust with embodied AI systems through motion synchronization.
Publication of the results
Primary Contact: Florian Müller, LMU Munich
Results Description
When we go for a walk with friends, we can observe an interesting effect: From step lengths to arm movements – our movements unconsciously align; they synchronize. Prior research in social psychology found that this synchronization is a crucial aspect of human relations that strengthens social cohesion and trust. In this micro project, we explored if and how this effect generalizes beyond human-human relationships. We hypothesized that synchronization can enhance the relationship between humans and AI systems by increasing the sense of connectedness in the formation of techno-social teams working together on a task. To evaluate the feasibility of this approach, we built a prototype of a simple non-humanoid robot as an embodied representation of an AI system. The robot tracks the upper body movements of people in its vicinity and can bend to follow human movements and vary the movement synchronization patterns. Using this prototype, we conducted a controlled experiment with 51 participants exploring our concept in a between-subjects design. We found significantly higher ratings on trust between people and automation in an established questionnaire for synchronized movements. However, we could not find an influence on the willingness to spend money in a trust game inspired by behavioral economics. Taken together, our results strongly suggest a positive effect of synchronized movement on the participants’ feeling of trust toward embodied AI representations.
Publications
To appear May 2023:
Wieslaw Bartkowski, Andrzej Nowak, Filip Ignacy Czajkowski, Albrecht Schmidt, and Florian Müller. 2023. In Sync: Exploring Synchronization to Increase Trust Between Humans and Non-humanoid Robots. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 14 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581193
Links to Tangible results
Paper: https://syncandshare.lrz.de/getlink/fiAUnSaqgQJyEdcw5XJqpN/in_sync_final.pdf
Video 30 sec: https://syncandshare.lrz.de/getlink/fiRjwbk1AoYxKujaEaZ5ax/in_sync_video_short.mp4
Video Full: https://syncandshare.lrz.de/getlink/fiGEX3bGahhbzrChUiXqvL/in_sync_video_full.mp4
Repository ( to be filled by the time of publication of the paper): https://github.com/wbartkowski/In-Sync-Robot-Prototype
