Trust and robotics: a multi-staged decision-making approach to robots in community

With the desired outcome of social good within the wider robotics ecosystem, trust is identified as the central adhesive of the human–robot interaction (HRI) interface. However, building trust between humans and robots involves more than improving the machine’s technical reliability or trustworthiness in function. This paper presents a holistic, community-based approach to trust-building, where trust is understood as a multifaceted and multi-staged looped relation that depends heavily on context and human perceptions. Building on past literature that identifies dispositional and learned stages of trust, our proposed decision to trust model considers more extensively the human and situational factors influencing how trust manifests within social relations. Priority is given to the human user of technology—the initiator of human—robot trust relations—at all stages of decision-making. The envisioned formation of optimal conditions in which trust emerges requires the collective participation of practitioners, policymakers, and members of the community. With trust facilitating the smooth transition of robots into more socially embedded roles, positive receptivity of the best engineering project arises from the presence of harmonious robot-human trust relations in community spaces.