Implications of children's social, emotional, and relational interactions with robots for human–robot empathy

摘要

Social robots are a new technology designed to help and support people in a variety of domains, including healthcare, workplaces, transportation, education, and entertainment. Social robots are distinguished from other robots, e.g., spacefaring robots or industrial robots, in their leveraging of human social cues to create more intuitive interfaces for human–machine interaction. This chapter discusses human empathy through the lens of children’s interactions with social robots. Empathy is the experience of an other’s mindedness – the perception that another has an embodied mind, that the other is necessarily distinct from oneself. Empathy is necessarily being I-thou relation: it is a relationship that emerges from interacting with others. Children, in particular, appear willing to treat robots as social-relational interaction partners in a range of settings: in labs, schools, hospitals, and homes; and for education, healthcare support, entertainment, and more.