Perceived Robot Capability

Robotics research often focuses on increasing robot capability. If end users do not perceive these increases, however, user acceptance may not improve. In this work, we explore the idea of perceived capability and how it relates to true capability, differentiating between physical and social capabilities. We present a framework that outlines their potential relationships, along with two user studies, on robot speed and speech, exploring these relationships. Our studies identify two possible consequences of the disconnect between the true and perceived capability: (1) under-perception: true improvements in capability may not lead to perceived improvements and (2) over-perception: true improvements in capability may lead to additional perceived improvements that do not actually exist.