Enhancing Human-Robot Collaboration Through Robotic Eye Gaze: A Study on External Stimuli and Predictive Cues in Interaction

In the era of Industry 4.0, robotics and AI are rapidly evolving to enhance human-robot collaboration. However, factories experience workflow delays and underutilize advanced technologies due to inefficient human-robot integration. Most existing research overlooks human biases and has not explored whether humans will collaborate with robots when guided by external stimuli. This study addresses this gap by investigating whether robotic eye gaze can enhance human-robot collaboration. To explore human behavior with external cues, 51 participants engaged with a six-degrees-of-freedom robot to choose the same buzzer button among two options simultaneously. Participants also performed cognitive and coordination tasks to imitate an industrial environment. Using computer vision, the program analyzed hand angles and applied an opinion dynamics algorithm to establish real-time opinions of both the human and robot. Initially, the robot’s opinion was programmed to actively disagree with the human, stimulating a need for external collaboration. Later, a realistic robotic head used eye movement to indicate its intended actions, with the gaze becoming more pronounced each round. Findings revealed that 91% of participants noticed the robot's eye gaze and used it to influence their decisions, and 86% felt more aligned with the robot's decisions after the eyes began moving. In the final iteration, 100% of participants aligned their button choice with the robot's, demonstrating the effectiveness of visual cues. These results suggest that humans are highly susceptible to influence and bias from a robot to achieve a common goal, highlighting the potential for enhancing human-robot collaboration through subtle external stimuli.