Robot errors can disrupt human-robot collaboration by reducing user trust and willingness to rely on the robot. Robot apologies can support trust recovery after such errors, but their effects may vary with apology strategy and error severity. This study therefore presents a user experiment based on a 2x2 between-subjects factorial design to examine the effect of humorous robot apologies on user trust recovery and the moderating role of error severity. The design crosses robot error severity (low vs. high) with apology strategy (generic vs. humorous). An online experiment will be conducted using the open-source Warehouse Robot Interaction Simulator. Participants will complete a collaborative task, experience a robot error followed by an apology, and report trust, trust recovery, interaction experience and reuse intention. We hypothesize that humorous apologies will produce greater trust recovery than generic apologies after low-severity errors, but that the advantage of humor will weaken or reverse after high-severity errors.

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