When expressive humanoid robots are awkward, people become wary – new brain study

Expressive humanoid robots are intended to make people feel at ease when interacting with them. Pau Barrena/AFP via Getty Images People become more suspicious of a humanoid robot that makes errors, especially when the robot is an expressive conversation partner. In our new study published in the journal Science Robotics, we had 50 people hold conversations and make joint decisions with the commercial humanoid robot Pepper, which is designed to be expressive and recognize emotions. Sometimes we…