The presentation of a robot's capability and identity directly influences a human collaborator's perception and implicit trust in the robot. Unlike humans, a physical robot can simultaneously present different identities and have them reside and control different parts of the robot. This paper presents a novel study that investigates how users perceive a robot where different robot control domains (head and gripper) are presented as independent robots. We conducted a mixed design study where participants experienced one of three presentations: a single robot, two agents with shared full control (co-embodiment), or two agents with split control across robot control domains (split-embodiment). Participants underwent three distinct tasks -- a mundane data entry task where the robot provides motivational support, an individual sorting task with isolated robot failures, and a collaborative arrangement task where the robot causes a failure that directly affects the human participant. Participants perceived the robot as residing in the different control domains and were able to associate robot failure with different identities. This work signals how future robots can leverage different embodiment configurations to obtain the benefit of multiple robots within a single body.

翻译：机器人能力与身份的表征方式直接影响人类协作者对其的感知与内在信任。与人类不同，物理机器人可同时呈现不同身份，并使其驻留及控制机器人的不同部件。本文提出一项创新研究，探讨当机器人不同控制域（头部与夹爪）被呈现为独立机器人时用户的感知机制。我们采用混合设计开展实验，参与者体验三种呈现方式之一：单一机器人、共享完全控制的双智能体（共体现）、或分控机器人不同控制域的双智能体（分体现）。参与者完成三项差异化任务——包含机器人提供激励支持的常规数据录入任务、存在独立机器人故障的个体分拣任务，以及机器人引发直接影响人类参与者的故障的协同布置任务。实验表明，参与者能够感知机器人驻留在不同控制域，并将机器人故障与不同身份关联。本研究成果揭示了未来机器人如何通过不同具身配置，在单一体内实现多机器人协同优势。