We study the psychophysiological state of humans when exposed to robot groups of varying sizes. In our experiments, 24 participants are exposed sequentially to groups of robots made up of 1, 3 and 24 robots. We measure both objective physiological metrics (skin conductance level and heart rate), and subjective self-reported metrics (from a psychological questionnaire). These measures allow us to analyse the psychophysiological state (stress, anxiety, happiness) of our participants. Our results show that the number of robots to which a human is exposed has a significant impact on the psychophysiological state of the human and that higher numbers of robots provoke a stronger response.
['Gaëtan Podevijn', 'Rehan O’Grady', 'Nithin Mathews', 'Audrey Gilles', 'Carole Fantini-Hauwel', 'Marco Dorigo']
Investigating the effect of increasing robot group sizes on the human psychophysiological state in the context of human–swarm interaction