Robot moderation of a collaborative game: Towards socially assistive robotics in group interactions

This paper presents an algorithm for enabling a robot to act as the moderator in a group interaction centered around a tablet-based assembly game. The algorithm uses one of two different objective functions: one intended to be “performance equalizing”, wherein the robot attempts to equalize scoring among users, and another intended to be “performance reinforcing”, wherein the robot attempts to help the group score as many points as possible. In an evaluation study with ten groups of three participants, we found that the “performance equalizing” algorithm improved task performance and reduced group cohesion, while the “performance reinforcing” algorithm improved group cohesion and reduced task performance.