An engineering approach to sociable robots

Abstract

Abstract Robotics researchers and cognitive scientists are becoming more and more interested in so-called sociable robots. These machines normally have expressive power (facial features, voice, …) as well as abilities for locating, paying attention to, and addressing people. The design objective is to make robots which are able to sustain natural interactions with people. This capacity falls within the range classed as social intelligence in humans. This position paper argues that the reproduction of social intelligence, as opposed to other types of human ability, may lead to fragile performance, in the sense that tested cases may produce rather different performances to future (untested) cases and situations. This limitation stems from the fact that our social abilities, which appear early in life, are mainly unconscious in origin. This is in contrast with other human abilities that we carry out using conscious effort, and for which we can easily conceive algorithms and representations. This novel perspective is deemed useful for defining the obstacles and limitations of a field that is generating increasing interest. Taking into account the mentioned issues, a development approach suited to the problem is proposed. The use of this approach is demonstrated in the development of CASIMIRO, a robotic head with basic interaction abilities. Keywords: Sociable robotsRoboticsHuman-robot interactionCognitive science Acknowledgements This work was partially funded by research projects UNI2005/18 of Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, PI2003/160 and PI2003/165 of Gobierno de Canarias and TIN2004-07087 of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and the European Fund for Regional Development (FEDER). Notes †An anonymous referee raised the objection that the individuals chosen all had high levels of computing knowledge. Such individuals were used on purpose, to make the test harder for the robot, as these individuals usually know how robots work internally and what programming can do. The target is not what sociability level the robot has, but what sociability level may be perceived as such.