How and When Can Robots Be Team Members? Three Decades of Research on Human–Robot Teams

Abstract

Artificial intelligence and robotic technologies have grown in sophistication and reach. Accordingly, research into mixed human–robot teams that comprise both robots and humans has expanded as well, attracting the attention of researchers from different disciplines, such as organizational behavior, human–robot interaction, cognitive science, and robotics. With this systematic literature review, the authors seek to establish deeper insights into existing research and sharpen the definitions of relevant terms. With a close consideration of 150 studies published between 1990 and 2020 that investigate mixed human–robot teams, conceptually or empirically, this article provides both a systematic evaluation of extant research and propositions for further research.

Effects of automated communication on team members’ activity and social presence awareness, commitment, and motivation in human-autonomy teams

“…While many studies have shown that the use of agents improves outcomes (Fan & Yen, 2010;Wright et al, 2016), this research has examined how team processes are affected by software agents. As existing research on robots as team members (Wolf & Stock-Homburg, 2022;You & Robert, 2018b) has focused on trust or acceptance, it might be worthwhile to extended this also to analyze social processes within human-autonomy teams. This study suggests that future research should be aware of more complex processes (e.g., IMOI-model, You & Robert, 2018a;Shoemaker et al, 2016) that are influenced by software agents.…”

Conceptual Framework to Study Team Cohesion in Human-Robot Teams

“…Robots with human teams are used in various disciplines like search and rescue, space exploration, and minimally invasive surgeries. Human-Robot Teams (HRTs) are multiple-member collaborative teams exhibiting task interdependencies (Wolf and Stock-Homburg, 2022) Robots which interact naturally with humans, work as partners and interact socially with humans to get tasks done are called Social Robots (Cagiltay et al, 2020). The exploration of the social dynamics and how Social Robots integrate into HRTs as part of our daily lives is still nascent.…”