Sociable machines: expressive social exchange between humans and robots

Abstract

Sociable humanoid robots are natural and intuitive for people to communicate with and to teach. We present recent advances in building an autonomous humanoid robot, Kismet, that can engage humans in expressive social interaction. We outline a set of design issues and a framework that we have found to be of particular importance for sociable robots. Having a human-in-the-loop places significant social constraints on how the robot aesthetically appears, how its sensors are configured, its quality of movement, and its behavior. Inspired by infant social development, psychology, ethology, and evolutionary per-spectives, this work integrates theories and concepts from these diverse viewpoints to enable Kismet to enter into natural and intuitive social interaction with a human caregiver, reminiscent of parent-infant exchanges. Kismet perceives a variety of natu-ral social cues from visual and auditory channels, and delivers social signals to people through gaze direction, facial expression, body posture, and vocalizations. We present the implementation of Kismet's social competencies and evaluate each