Page 26 - Designing Sociable Robots

breazeal-79017 book March 18, 2002 13:50

The Vision of Sociable Robots 7

Being There

Humans are embodied and situated in the social world. We ground our experiences through
our body as we interact with the environment and with others. As such, our bodies provide
us with a means for relating to the world and for giving our experiences meaning (Lakoff,
1990). Brooks has extensively argued for the importance of embodiment and being situated
in the world for understanding and generating intelligent behavior in animals and robots
(Brooks, 1990). Socially intelligent robots can better support these human characteristics if
they are embodied and socially situated with people. For this reason, Kismet is a physical
robot that interacts with people face-to-face.
Having a body and existing within a shared environment is advantageous for both the
robot as well as for those people who interact with it. From the perspective of the robot,
its body provides it with a vehicle for experiencing and for interacting with the social
world. Further, the robot can interpret these experiences within a social context. From the
perspective of a human who interacts with the robot, it is also beneficial for the robot to
have a body. Given that humans have evolved to socially interact with embodied creatures,
many of our social skills and communication modalities rely on both parties having a body.
For instance, people frequently exchange facial expressions, gestures, and shift their gaze
direction when communicating with others. Even at a more basic level, people rely on having
a point of reference for directing their communication efforts toward the desired individual,
and for knowing where to look for communicative feedback from that individual.
The embodiment and situatedness of a robot can take several forms. For instance, the robot
couldsharethesamephysicalspaceasaperson,suchasahumanoidrobotthatcommunicates
using familiar social cues (Brooks et al., 1999). Alternatively, the technology could be a
computer-animated agent within a virtual space that interacts with a human in the physical
world. Embodied conversational agents (Cassell, 1999a) are a prime example. It is also
possible to employ virtual-reality (VR) techniques to immerse the human within the virtual
world of the animated agent (Rickel & Johnson, 2000). These robots or animated agents
are often humanoid in form to support gestures, facial expressions, and other embodied
social cues that are familiar to humans. The nature of the experience for the human varies
in each of these different scenarios depending upon the sensing limits of the technologies
(such as keyboards, cameras, microphones, etc.); whether the human must be instrumented
(e.g., wearing data gloves, VR helmets, etc.); the amount of freedom the person has to move
within the space; and the type of display technology employed, be it mechanical, projected
on a large screen, or displayed on a computer monitor.

Life-Like Quality
People are attracted to life-like behavior and seem quite willing to anthropomorphize nature
and even technological artifacts. We appear biased to perceive and recognize other living