What Are They Worried About? Initial Insights into Users’ Mental Models of Robot Hazards

Abstract

We are conducting design workshops with potential users of robots to discover their mental models of safety risks in human-robot interaction. Robots may pose many dangers, such as physical harm, deception, privacy concerns, and more. Initial results suggest that people are already aware of, and concerned by, a wide range of specific risks associated with robots, which we enumerate in this paper, and together with the organization and framing they use to understand them. Further, our ongoing study investigates their ideas for strategies to communicate these risks to users. Through this study, we ultimately aim to synthesize these results into a blueprint toward the transparent communication of risks in human-robot interaction.

Citation

James M. Berzuk, Samuel R. M. Barrett, and James E. Young. (in press). What Are They Worried About? Initial Insights into Users’ Mental Models of Robot Hazards. International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI'26). 2 pages.

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