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# Involvement of Predictive Mechanisms in Human-Robot Joint Action: the Lens of Agency

Alicia Barsacq, David Daney, Jean-Christophe Sarrazin

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Alicia Barsacq, David Daney, Jean-Christophe Sarrazin. Involvement of Predictive Mechanisms in Human-Robot Joint Action: the Lens of Agency. JJCR 2025 - Journée des Jeunes Chercheuses et Jeunes Chercheurs en Robotique, Sep 2025, Rennes, France. hal-05374482

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Submitted on 20 Nov 2025

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Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
# Involvement of Predictive Mechanisms in Human-Robot Joint Action: the Lens of Agency

Alicia Barsacq¹, David Daney¹, Jean-Christophe Sarrazin²

1. Inria, Talence, France

2. ONERA, Salon-de-Provence, France

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alicia.barsacq@inria.

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## Background

Increase in complexity of robotic system for assisting humans can lead to loss of feeling of control (agency) on the interaction. Studying this phenomenon through the lens of agency can help conceive better robotic assistance.

Agency relies on predictive mechanisms[1] :

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## Measures of agency

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Intentional Binding

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Questionnaire

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Sensory attenuation

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## Similarities in HHI and HRI

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Increased cues improves predictability of the robotic system

<figure><img src="image_15.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3: Reaction time in the human-robot hand-over experiments. 4: humanoid robot, 5: industrial robot. 4a, 5a: minimum jerk profile; 4b, 5b: trapezoidal joint velocity profile.</figcaption></figure>

Minimum-jerk trajectory betters Reaction Time of humans during a human-robot hand-over task [3].

Robotic systems are able to provide more cues to humans via movement, thus improving their predictions. This improves coordination during the interaction and agency over the joint task.

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Attribution of intentionality impacts agency

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Perceived robot intentionality produces vicarious intentional binding over the robot's action [4]

Perceived intentionality allow humans to better predict the robot's action. This prediction mechanism seems to be inhibited when interacting with unintentional systems or machines.

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Perceptual differentiability modulates agency

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Motion caused by assisting force can be attributed to the participant if it is coherent with the task. [5]

This is applicable especially in teleoperative robotic, where the final motion is a blend of the human motion and assistance, or when the human movement is directly assisted via haptic feedback.

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## Discussion

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Human sensorimotor haptic interactions go beyond minimum-jerk

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An experiment of decision-making via shared haptic devices between two partners showed a difference in IB when partnered with a human or a robot, even if the participant was not aware of the presence of the robot [6]

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Paired to this result, observation of inter-adaptative micro movements was made in the human-human condition, but not in the human-robot condition

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This hints at fundamental difference between robot and human's motion that could hinder agency during a physical collaborative task

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Coordinating with a second agent can lower agency [7]

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[1] C. D. Frith, S.-J. Blakemore, and D. M. Wolpert, "Abnormalities in the awareness and control of action," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, vol. 355, no. 1404, pp. 1771-1788, Dec. 2000, doi: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2000.0734.

[2] G. Hughes, A. Desantis, and F. Waszak, "Attenuation of auditory N1 results from identity-specific action-effect prediction," European Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 37, no. 7, pp. 1152-1158, Jan. 2013, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.12120.

[3] S. Glasauer, M. Huber, P. Basili, A. Knoll, and T. Brandt, "Interacting in time and space: Investigating human-human and human-robot joint action," IEEE Xplore, Sep. 01, 2010. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5598638 (accessed Nov. 20, 2022).

[4] U. P. Navare, F. Ciardo, K. Kompatsiari, D. De Tommaso, and A. Wykowska, "When performing actions with robots, attribution of intentionality affects the sense of joint agency," Science Robotics, vol. 9, no. 91, Jun. 2024, doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adj3665.

[5] S. Endo, Jakob Fröhner, S. Musić, S. Hirche, and P. Beckerle, "Effect of External Force on Agency in Physical Human-Machine Interaction," Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 14, May 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.000114.

[6] O. Grynszpan et al., "The sense of agency in human-human vs human-robot joint action," Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 75, p. 102820, Oct. 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2019.102820.

[7] L. Zapparoli et al., "Self-other distinction modulates the sense of self-agency during joint actions," Scientific Reports, vol. 14, no. 1, Dec. 2024, doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-80880-7.

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## References