The Role of Emotion-Inspired Abilities in Relational Robots

Abstract

This chapter summarizes ongoing work in developing and embedding affective technologies in learning interactions with automated systems, such robotic learning companions. The primary motivation for building robots with social-emotional-inspired capabilities is to develop “relational robots” and their associated applications in diverse areas such as health, education, or work productivity where the human user derives performance benefit from establishing a kind of social rapport with the robot. The chapter describes some of the future applications for such robots, provides a brief summary of the current capabilities of state-of-the-art socially interactive robots, presents recent findings in human-computer interaction, and concludes with a few challenges that should be addressed in future research.