Over the last decade the idea that robots could become an integral part of teamwork developed from a promising vision into a reality. Robots support teamwork across a wide range of settings covering search and rescue missions, minimally invasive surgeries, space exploration missions, and manufacturing. Scholars have increasingly explored the ways in which robots influence how work in teams is performed, but that work has primarily focused on task specific aspects of team functioning such as the development of situational awareness, common ground, and task coordination. Robots, however, can affect teamwork not only through the task-specific functions they have been developed to serve but also by affecting a team’s regulation of emotion. In this talk I present empirical findings from several studies that show how theory and methods that were originally developed to understand the role of emotions in marital interactions can help us to not only further our understanding of teamwork but also to inform how we design robots to improve teamwork through their emotion regulatory behavior.
Malte Jung is an Assistant Professor in Information Science at Cornell University and the Nancy H. ’62 and Philip M. ’62 Young Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow. His research focuses on the intersections of teamwork, robots, and emotion. The goal of his research is to inform our basic understanding of robots in work teams as well as to inform how we design technology to support teamwork across a wide range of settings. Malte Jung received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. Prior to joining Cornell, Malte Jung completed a postdoc at the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization at Stanford University. He holds a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Munich and an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.