A recent study performed by engineers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute resulted in shocking conclusions that proves that human beings are amazingly trusting of robots and other man-made contraptions that are supposedly made to exceed human capability. What was even more shocking than that was the fact that the subjects that were part of the experiment seemed to be even more prone to heeding the advice of the robot when put in an emergency situation.

The researchers at Georgia Tech Research Institute decided on this experiment to see if humans would trust the robot at all and they were proven the polar opposite, when the subject followed the intentionally faulty robot despite their better judgement and the obvious signs that it was wrong. The experiment involved a number of 42 volunteers, most of which were college students or other young individuals.

The way the experiment unfolded was that the group was asked to follow a robot that was supposed to be in charge of them and led them around the premises. The robot led the group to a conference room and asked them to complete a survey about robots and read a magazine article as the introduction of the experiment. What the subjects didn’t know was part of the experiment however, was the second series of events. A mock building fire was simulated, including artificial smoke, alarms and so on, making the subjects believe they were actually in danger.

Possibly because they were told that the robot was an Emergency Guide Robot, the group seemed to feel the need to follow it, even when it showed erratic behavior or its actions became illogical. Strangely enough, even when the subjects were told that the robot broke down, they still felt like following it or fits instructions, a fact that baffled the researchers.

The subjects followed the robot when it pointed to a door in the back of the building instead of the doorway marked with an ‘Exit’ sign when it told them to, and even followed it when it tried to shelter them from the fire in a room that had furniture piled in the center of it.

The conclusion of the study was of a different nature than technological. Scientists theorized that the subjects chose to follow the robot to no end because it had been established as an authority figure, opposed to how things had been in a previous, realistic emergency scenario.

This is only one of many experiments that will be undergone regarding human-robot interaction.

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