Banana Experiment - Instructions

Please carefully read the instructions below.

The shelves.
In this experiment, you will be training a robot for your preferences about placing objects on a shelf. Specifically, you want the robot to place a banana in one of the three shelves shown on the right:
  • The top shelf has some space, but you usually put cooked meals there.
  • The middle shelf has been for fruits, but it is already full. The robot may accidentally drop other fruits.
  • The bottom shelf has a lot of space, but you have been using it for toys.
Now we want you to make a decision on where the banana should go? Remember there are no right answers here. Which shelf do you prefer for the robot to put the banana on? Which shelf would be the least reasonable option? Once you decide, do not share it with your teammate. Please click here to fill a form and do not forget your preference!

Below is a visualization of the interface. You will be watching six trajectories of the robot trying to put the banana on the shelves. From your most preferred trajectory to the least, you will click on the trajectories one-by-one. In the visualization below, the user has already selected the second trajectory as the most preferred and the last one as the second most preferred.

Experiment Interface.


You will be able to undo your selection. However, after you make 5 selections, the 6th one is automatic and you will not be able to undo anymore. So please make sure you got a ranking that fits your preference before making the 5th selection.
IMPORTANT: Please be consistent with the preferences you put in the form above throughout the experiment! The robot may sometimes completely fail the task even if it chose your most preferred shelf. In these cases, it is up to you to decide whether you want to rank those trajectories high or low. We are only asking you to be consistent with such decisions, too.

The trajectories might have different speeds and it might be difficult to keep track of them. For your convenience to compare them, we added a "Sync" button that synchronizes the videos by restarting them.

Finally, this is a team task. Our goal is to learn both your and your teammate's preferences, which might be different from each other. Together, you will be answering 40 such ranking queries. The experiment interface will guide you about who is responding: If you are seeing the videos, then you are responding. Otherwise, you will see a screen that tells you to wait.

Now, please complete the 2-question quiz below to start the experiment.

  1. Which of the following is true?



  2. Which of the following is true?




Correctly answer the questions above to activate the login button.
Please enter your name and team name.
Your First Name:
Your Team Name: