  In three laboratory experiments, we examine the impact of personally relevant
failures (PeRFs) on perceptions of a collaborative robot. PeR is determined by
how much a specific issue applies to a particular person, i.e., it affects
one's own goals and values. We hypothesized that PeRFs would reduce trust in
the robot and the robot's Likeability and Willingness to Use (LWtU) more than
failures that are not personal to participants. To achieve PeR in human-robot
interaction, we utilized three different manipulation mechanisms: A) damage to
property, B) financial loss, and C) first-person versus third-person failure
scenarios. In total, 132 participants engaged with a robot in person during a
collaborative task of laundry sorting. All three experiments took place in the
same experimental environment, carefully designed to simulate a realistic
laundry sorting scenario. Results indicate that the impact of PeRFs on
perceptions of the robot varied across the studies. In experiments A and B, the
encounters with PeRFs reduced trust significantly relative to a no failure
session. But not entirely for LWtU. In experiment C, the PeR manipulation had
no impact. The work highlights challenges and adjustments needed for studying
robotic failures in laboratory settings. We show that PeR manipulations affect
how users perceive a failing robot. The results bring about new questions
regarding failure types and their perceived severity on users' perception of
the robot. Putting PeR aside, we observed differences in the way users perceive
interaction failures compared (experiment C) to how they perceive technical
ones (A and B).
