Page 167 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

150 Socially Intelligent Agents

2. Designing Sociable Robots

Somewhat like human infants, sociable robots shall be situated in a very
complex social environment (that of adult humans) with limited perceptual,
motor, and cognitive abilities. Human infants, however, are born with a set of
perceptual and behavioral biases. Soon after birth they are particularly attentive
to people and human-mediated events, and can react in a recognizable manner
(called proto-social responses) that conveys social responsiveness. These in-
nate abilities suggests how critically important it is for the infant to establish
a social bond with his caregiver, both for survival purposes as well as to en-
sure normal cognitive and social development [4]. For this reason, Kismet has
been given a roughly analogous set of perceptual and behavioral abilities (see
Figure 18.1, and refer to [3] for technical details).
Together, the infant’s biological attraction to human-mediated events in con-
junction with his proto-social responses launch him into social interactions
with his caregiver. There is an imbalance in the social and cultural sophistica-
tion of the two partners. Each, however, has innate endowments for helping the
infant deal with a rich social environment. For instance, the infant uses pro-
tective responses and expressive displays for avoiding harmful or unpleasant
situations and to encourage and engage in beneficial ones. Human adults seem
to intuitively read these cues to keep the infant comfortable, and to adjust their
own behavior to suit his limited perceptual, cognitive, and motor abilities.
Being situated in this environment is critical for normal development be-
cause as the infant’s capabilities improve and become more diverse, there is
still an environment of sufficient complexity into which he can develop. For
this reason, Kismet has been designed with mechanisms to help it cope with
a complex social environment, to tune its responses to the human, and to give
the human social cues so that she is better able to tune herself to it. This allows
Kismet to be situated in the world of humans without being overwhelmed or
under-stimulated.
Both the infant’s responses and his parent’s own caregiving responses have
been selected for because they encourage adults to treat the infant as an in-
tentional being—as if he is already fully socially aware and responsive with
thoughts, wishes, intents, desires, and feelings that he is trying to communi-
cate as would any other person. This “deception” is critical for the infant’s
development because it bootstraps him into a cultural world [4]. Over time,
the infant discovers what sorts of activity on his part will get responses from
her, and also allows for routine, predictable sequences to be established that
provide a context of mutual expectations. This is possible due to the care-
giver’s consistent and predictable manner of responding to her infant because
she assumes that he is fully socially responsive and shares the same meanings
that she applies to the interaction. Eventually, the infant exploits these con-