Evaluating Gaze Communication in a Human-Robot Memory Game Setting

Gaze plays a crucial role in human interaction, thus also serving as a powerful non-verbal cue for human-robot interaction. In a memory game setting, we developed an interactive robot with two cameras as eyes to investigate how humans respond to robot gaze. Participants were presented with a sequence of colors, either through light-emitting diode (LED) instructions or robot gaze, and were tasked with reproducing them. We gathered N=40 participants spanning different demographic profiles and varying levels of prior robotic experience and conducted experiments to test several factors. We assessed participants' performance, understanding and confidence in both conditions, along with evaluating the game's efficacy and comfort. We found that the performance, understanding, and confidence of the participants were greater when given instructions by the LED. However, we found that the majority (75%) of participants found the game to be more engaging with the robot gaze, and that 85% of participants found that the robot gaze improves the social aspect of the game. Overall, while the instructions given by the robot gaze had a slightly greater mental load, the game played with the robot gaze was more preferable, engaging, and fun for the participants.