  Social communication between people and social robots has been studied
extensively and found to have various notable benefits, including the
enhancement of human-robot team cohesion and the development of rapport and
trust. However, the potential of social communication between people and
non-social robots, such as non-anthropomorphic robot manipulators commonly used
in work settings (\eg warehouse and factory), is less explored and not well
established. In this work, we investigate people's engagement and attitudes
towards a non-anthropomorphic robot manipulator that initiates small talk
during a collaborative assembly task and explore how the presence of negative
team feedback may affect team dynamics and blame attribution. Through an
in-person study with 20 participants, we observed a response rate of 77.60% in
response to the robot's small talk attempts. Nine participants continued
engaging with the robot by initiating their own questions, indicating sustained
interest in the conversation. However, we also found that the first negative
feedback decreased the participants' willingness to extend the conversation. We
additionally present participants' initial perceptions of small talk for
physical robot manipulators and discuss design implications for integrating
small talk into non-social robots, along with various aspects of small talk
that may influence physical human-robot interactions.
