Page 19 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

2 Socially Intelligent Agents

Figure 1.1. Elephants are socially intelligent biological agents that live in family groups with
strong, long-lasting social bonds. Much research into socially intelligent artifacts is inspired by
animal (including human) social intelligence.

of IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part A emerged from this sympo-
sium which provides an in depth treatment of a few research approaches in
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that area . Unlike the special journal issue, this book has a radically differ-
ent nature: it is intended to be the first definitive collection of current work
in the rapidly growing field of Socially Intelligent Agents, providing a useful
and timely reference for computer scientists, web programmers and designers,
computer users, and researchers interested in the issue of how humans relate
to computers and robots, and how these agents in return can relate to them.
Each of the 32 chapters is, compared to a journal article, relatively short and
compact, focusing on the main theoretical and practical issues involved in the
work. Each chapter gives references to other publications that can provide the
reader with further detailed information.
In the area of software and intelligent agents many other publications are
available, e.g. [1], [9], [6], proceedings of the Autonomous Agents and other
conferences, just to name a few. However, none of them provide a state-of-
the-art reference book on Socially Intelligent Agents with an interdisciplinary
approach including both software and robotic agents.
Despite many publications that either a) specialize in particular issues rele-
vant to Socially Intelligent Agents (e.g. robots, emotions, conversational skills,
narrative, social learning and imitation etc., cf. [12], [10], [3], [7], [2], [11],
[4]), or b) present a small number of in-depth discussions of particular research
projects (published in journal issues mentioned above), the field of Socially
Intelligent Agents is missing a state-of-the-art collection that can provide an
overview and reference book. More and more researchers and PhD students