CS Special Seminar: Franziska Babel "Human-robot conflicts: opportunities for engineering psychology research or challenges for our society?"

Human-robot conflicts: opportunities for engineering psychology research or challenges for our society?

Franziska Babel
Linköping University
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Abstract: As robots become more prevalent in our everyday lives, conflicts between humans and robots will be unavoidable. These can be the competition for a scarce resource such as an elevator but can also include pathway conflicts or contradicting goals. This talk will highlight the opportunities and challenges that conflicts between humans and automated technology present for studying underlying engineering psychology principles like acceptance, trust, and compliance. It will also show the fundamental role of expectations about the social status of robots and how this shapes our behaviour towards them. It will illustrate certain societal issues that might arise if we do not adapt our master-slave expectations about robots to the growing technological landscape where robots can be direct representants of humans (i.e., social injustice). The talk will conclude with plans for future research in the intersection of engineering psychology, human factors and human-robot interaction.

Bio: Dr. Franziska Babel is a psychological researcher from Germany, currently living in Sweden, who has specialized in Human Factors and Engineering psychology and investigates how humans trust, accept and react to automated technology such as robots, autonomous cars and AI. She is especially interested in persuasive technologies, human-robot power structures and explainable AI.