Skip to main content

Advice to New Human-Robot Interaction Researchers

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Human-Robot Interaction

Part of the book series: Springer Series on Bio- and Neurosystems ((SSBN,volume 12))

Abstract

As the field of Human-Robot Interaction is relatively young and highly interdisciplinary, it often happens that we as researchers make mistakes which could have been avoided had we known more about good and bad research practices in fields other than our own. Bad practices such as convenience sampling, p-hacking, or the Hawthorne effect will be known to some, but are too often unfamiliar to others. HRI is lucky to mature during one of the biggest revolutions in experimental psychology: the “replication crisis” was one of the most seminal moments in psychology and its repercussions are felt far and wide, including in HRI. This chapter lists some of the important mistakes often made in HRI studies and suggest practical recommendations for better research studies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Adair, J.G.: The hawthorne effect: a reconsideration of the methodological artifact. J. Appl. Psychol. 69(2), 334 (1984)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Baxter, P., Kennedy, J., Senft, E., Lemaignan, S., Belpaeme, T.: From characterising three years of HRI to methodology and reporting recommendations. In: The Eleventh ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction, pp. 391–398. IEEE Press (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Belpaeme, T., Kennedy, J., Ramachandran, A., Scassellati, B., Tanaka, F.: Social robots for education: a review. Sci. Robot. 3(21), eaat5954 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Berinsky, A.J., Huber, G.A., Lenz, G.S.: Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon.com’s mechanical turk. Polit. Anal. 20(3), 351–368 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Berkowitz, L., Donnerstein, E.: External validity is more than skin deep: some answers to criticisms of laboratory experiments. Am. Psychol. 37(3), 245 (1982)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Boucher, J.D., Pattacini, U., Lelong, A., Bailly, G., Elisei, F., Fagel, S., Dominey, P.F., Ventre-Dominey, J.: I reach faster when i see you look: gaze effects in human-human and human-robot face-to-face cooperation. Front. Neurorobotics 6, 3 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., Gosling, S.D.: Amazon’s mechanical turk: a new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 6(1), 3–5 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Collaboration, O.S., et al.: Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science 349(6251), aac4716 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Cumming, G.: Replication and p intervals: p values predict the future only vaguely, but confidence intervals do much better. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 3(4), 286–300 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Dawson, C.: Introduction to research methods. In: A Practical Guide for Anyone Undertaking a Research Project, 5th edn. Robinson (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Esteban, P.G., Baxter, P., Belpaeme, T., Billing, E., Cai, H., Cao, H.L., Coeckelbergh, M., Costescu, C., David, D., De Beir, A., et al.: How to build a supervised autonomous system for robot-enhanced therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder. Paladyn J. Behav. Robot. 8(1), 18–38 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Field, A., Hole, G.: How to Design and Report Experiments. Sage (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Irfan, B., Kennedy, J., Lemaignan, S., Papadopoulos, F., Senft, E., Belpaeme, T.: Social psychology and human-robot interaction: an uneasy marriage. In: Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 13–20. ACM (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Kalegina, A., Schroeder, G., Allchin, A., Berlin, K., Cakmak, M.: Characterizing the design space of rendered robot faces. In: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 96–104. ACM (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Kaptein, M., Robertson, J.: Rethinking statistical analysis methods for CHI. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1105–1114. ACM (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Landsberger, H.A.: Hawthorne revisited: management and the worker, its critics, and developments in human relations in industry (1958)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Leite, I., Martinho, C., Paiva, A.: Social robots for long-term interaction: a survey. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 5(2), 291–308 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Li, J.: The benefit of being physically present: a survey of experimental works comparing copresent robots, telepresent robots and virtual agents. Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud. 77, 23–37 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Maxwell, S.E.: The persistence of underpowered studies in psychological research: causes, consequences, and remedies. Psychol. Methods 9(2), 147 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Nomura, T., Kanda, T., Kidokoro, H., Suehiro, Y., Yamada, S.: Why do children abuse robots? Interact. Stud. 17(3), 347–369 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Pashler, H., Wagenmakers, E.J.: Editors’ introduction to the special section on replicability in psychological science: a crisis of confidence? Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 7(6), 528–530 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Phillips, E., Zhao, X., Ullman, D., Malle, B.F.: What is human-like?: decomposing robots’ human-like appearance using the anthropomorphic robot (ABOT) database. In: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 105–113. ACM (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Ramachandran, A., Huang, C.M., Scassellati, B.: Give me a break!: personalized timing strategies to promote learning in robot-child tutoring. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 146–155. ACM (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Riek, L.D.: Wizard of oz studies in HRI: a systematic review and new reporting guidelines. J. Hum.-Robot. Interact. 1(1), 119–136 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Robins, B., Dautenhahn, K., Te Boekhorst, R., Billard, A.: Effects of repeated exposure to a humanoid robot on children with autism. In: Designing a More Inclusive World, pp. 225–236. Springer (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Vidgen, B., Yasseri, T.: P-values: misunderstood and misused. Front. Phys. 4, 6 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Woods, S., Dautenhahn, K., Kaouri, C.: Is someone watching me?-consideration of social facilitation effects in human-robot interaction experiments. In: Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation. CIRA 2005, pp. 53–60. IEEE (2005)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Paul Baxter, Bahar Irfan, James Kennedy, Fotios Papadopolous, Séverin Lemaignan, Emmanuel Senft for the discussion and insights used in this chapter.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tony Belpaeme .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Belpaeme, T. (2020). Advice to New Human-Robot Interaction Researchers. In: Jost, C., et al. Human-Robot Interaction. Springer Series on Bio- and Neurosystems, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42307-0_14

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42307-0_14

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-42306-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-42307-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics