# Helpfulness as a Key Metric of Human-Robot Collaboration

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.04914 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04914/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Be Considerate: Objectives, Side Effects, and Deciding How to Act](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02617/) (2021)
- [Value of Assistance for Mobile Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11961/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As robotic teammates become more common in society, people will assess the robots' roles in their interactions along many dimensions. One such dimension is effectiveness: people will ask whether their robotic partners are trustworthy and effective collaborators. This begs a crucial question: how can we quantitatively measure the helpfulness of a robotic partner for a given task at hand? This paper seeks to answer this question with regards to the interactive robot's decision making. We describe a clear, concise, and task-oriented metric applicable to many different planning and execution paradigms. The proposed helpfulness metric is fundamental to assessing the benefit that a partner has on a team for a given task. In this paper, we define helpfulness, illustrate it on concrete examples from a variety of domains, discuss its properties and ramifications for planning interactions with humans, and present preliminary results.