Development and validation of the fluency in human-robot interaction scale. A two-wave study on three perspectives of fluency. Issue 155 (November 2021) - Paliga, Mateusz
Highlights: Three perspectives of human-robot fluency discussed in the theoretical framework of fluency. State-of-the-art fluency measures reviewed. Questionnaire including the human, the robot, and the team as agents of fluency built and validated. Human-oriented fluency and team-oriented fluency predicted individual performance after six weeks of interaction with robots. Human-oriented fluency and robot-oriented fluency predicted individual performance after twelve weeks of interaction with robots. Abstract: Contemporary work offers many humans the possibility to collaborate with robots. In fact, in industrial settings, human-robot interaction has become a necessity. To improve the quality of human collaboration with their robotic counterparts, practitioners and researchers turn their attention to the concept of fluency. It is crucial for human-robot interaction yet difficult to investigate. Moreover, we argue that the notion of fluency being a unidimensional construct is insufficient to understand the complex interaction in a human-robot team. Therefore, we aimed to develop and validate a new measure to study subjective fluency from three different perspectives, i.e., the human-oriented, the robot-oriented, and the team-oriented. The scale can serve as a tool to better understand the dynamics of the relationship between the operator and the robot. In this paper, we presented the factor analyses and psychometric properties of the Fluency in Human-Robot Interaction Scale. Furthermore, we tested the validity of the scale by investigating the relationship between three perspectives of fluency and the individual performance as well as fluency change over 6 weeks. The results showed positive relationships among all perspectives of fluency and performance. However, no change over time was observed. The findings were discussed with regard to the possible use of the scale in practical and academic contexts.