Toward Human-in-the-Loop Construction Robotics: Understanding Workers' Response through Trust Measurement during Human-Robot Collaboration

The use of construction robots to facilitate labor-intensive tasks is increasing in many jobsites. However, human intelligence and expertise are yet crucial to support such robots in accomplishing their tasks. Therefore, it is essential that human-robot teams entail a human-in-the-loop approach for integrating humans into the system. To reliably design such systems, it is critical to understand workers' confidence in such models, particularly in hazardous and complex construction jobsites. In this context, assessing workers' trust can shed light on the efficient adoption of robots. To that end, this study investigates the impact of the human-in-the-loop approach on human-robot trust. Accordingly, a comparative experiment was conducted in an immersive virtual environment in which participants performed brick-laying tasks in collaboration with robots through two different approaches: a human-in-the-loop approach and a human-out-the-loop approach. The participants' trust in the robot was measured using the Trust Perception Scale-HRI. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test revealed that the human-in-the-loop approach could lead to significantly higher levels of trust. The findings of this study provide insights into the effective adoption of robots in construction sites. Thus, this study can open new doors to facilitating the imminent paradigm shift toward the human-in-the-loop approach in construction robotics.