Abstract
<p>As autonomous drones become increasingly integrated into intralogistics warehousing environments, understanding how trust develops in these systems is critical. This study investigates how brief interaction with an autonomous drone influences users’ mental models, trust, behavior, and semantic representations. Nineteen participants interacted with a drone in a warehouse mock-up. Measures were collected before, during, immediately after, and two to three weeks post-interaction. Mental model accuracy improved and remained stable at follow-up. Intention to use and several generalized trust dimensions increased over time, whereas situational trust and comfort proximity remained unchanged. Exploratory analyses indicated a positive association between higher post-interaction mental model accuracy and generalized trust at follow-up. Semantic representations remained primarily technical-functional across measurement-points. Together, the findings suggest a temporally delayed relationship between mental model updating and trust formation, indicating that interaction may shape trust through the development of increasingly accurate mental representations of autonomous systems rather than increasingly anthropomorphic representations.</p>