Page 20 - Designing Sociable Robots

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1 The Vision of Sociable Robots

What is a sociable robot? It is a difficult concept to define, but science fiction offers many
examples. There are the mechanical droids R2-D2 and C-3PO from the movie Star Wars and
the android Lt. Commander Data from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Many wonderful examples exist in the short stories of Isaac Asimov and Brian Aldiss, such
as the robots Robbie (Asimov, 1986) and David (Aldiss, 2001). For me, a sociable robot is
able to communicate and interact with us, understand and even relate to us, in a personal
way. It should be able to understand us and itself in social terms. We, in turn, should be
able to understand it in the same social terms—to be able to relate to it and to empathize
with it. Such a robot must be able to adapt and learn throughout its lifetime, incorporating
shared experiences with other individuals into its understanding of self, of others, and of
the relationships they share. In short, a sociable robot is socially intelligent in a human-
like way, and interacting with it is like interacting with another person. At the pinnacle of
achievement, they could befriend us, as we could them. Science fiction illustrates how these
technologies could enhance our lives and benefit society, but it also warns us that this dream
must be approached responsibly and ethically, as portrayed in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep (Dick, 1990) (made into the movie Blade Runner).

1.1 Why Sociable Robots?

Socially intelligent robots are not only interesting for science fiction. There are scientific
and practical reasons for building robots that can interact with people in a human-centered
manner. From a scientific perspective, we could learn a lot about ourselves from the process
of building socially intelligent robots. Our evolution, our development from infancy to
adulthood,ourculture from generationto generation,andour day-to-day existence in society
are all profoundly shaped by social factors (Vygotsky et al., 1980; Forgas, 2000; Brothers,
1997; Mead, 1934). Understanding our sociality is critical to understanding our humanity.
Toward this goal, robots could be used as experimental testbeds for scientific inquiry
(Adams et al., 2000). Computational models of our social abilities could be implemented,
tested, and analyzed on robots as they participate in controlled social scenarios. In this way,
robots could potentially be used in the same studies and experiments that scientists use to
understand human social behavior. Robot data could be compared with human performance
under similar conditions. Differences between the two could be used to refine the models and
inspire new experiments. Furthermore, given a thorough understanding of the implementa-
tion, parameters of the model could be systematically varied to understand their effects on
social behavior. By doing so, social behavior disorders could be better understood, which in
turn could aid in the development of effective treatments. For instance, autism is regarded
as an impairment in the ability to interact with and understand others in social terms. A few

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