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Rapport Building with Social Robots as a Method for Improving Mission Debriefing in Human-Robot Teams

Conflicts may arise at any time during military debriefing meetings, especially in high intensity deployed settings. When such conflicts arise, it takes time to get everyone back into a receptive state of mind so that they engage in reflective discussion rather than unproductive arguing. It has been proposed by some that the use of social robots equipped with social abilities such as emotion regulation through rapport building may help to deescalate these situations to facilitate critical operational decisions. However, in military settings, the same AI agent used in the pre-brief of a mission may not be the same one used in the debrief. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a brief rapport-building session with a social robot could create a connection between a human and a robot agent, and whether consistency in the embodiment of the robot agent was necessary for maintaining this connection once formed. We report the results of a pilot study conducted at the United States Air Force Academy which simulated a military mission (i.e., Gravity and Strike). Participants’ connection with the agent, sense of trust, and overall likeability revealed that early rapport building can be beneficial for military missions.