Remotely Seeing Is Believing: How Trust in Cyber-Physical Systems Evolves Through Virtual Observation

In this paper, we develop a virtual laboratory for measuring human trust. Our laboratory, which is realized as a web application, enables researchers to show pre-recorded or live video feeds to groups of users in a synchronized fashion. Users are able to provide real-time feedback on these videos via affect buttons and a freeform chat interface. We evaluate our application via a quantitative user study (N ≈ 80) involving videos of cyber-physical systems, such as autonomous vehicles, performing positively or negatively. Using data collected from user responses in the application, as well as customized survey instruments assessing different facets of trust, we find that human trust in cyber-physical systems can be affected merely by remotely observing the behavior of such systems, without ever encountering them in person.