The Self in the Machine

Abstract

Social human-robot interaction (HRI) has been widely recognised as one of the major challenges for robotics. This social aspect includes designing robots that embraces various humanlike characteristics regarding robot appearance and behaviour. Few HRI studies, however, address the core goal of human social interaction, i.e. the development of the self. This paper argues that social robots can constitute an illusion or an extension of the human self and should be developed as such. The concept of the self and its meanings for HRI research are here discussed from the symbolic interactionism perspective.