Motions with Emotions?

Abstract

This paper seeks to answer the question of how the interactive capabilities of social robots are related to their embodied character. Contributing to the discussions on the role of physical appearance in robotics, we apply a phenomenological theory of the body to develop a new understanding of the robot body. Drawing on Edmund Husserl's phenomenological distinction between the material and the lived body, we consider the robot body as “double” since it entails both objective and subjective aspects. We assume that the expressivity of “double bodies” can be seen as central in understanding the phenomenon of aliveness in social robots.