Page 194 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

Experiences with Sparky, a Social Robot 177

as covering the eyes, trapping it, pushing it backwards and engaging in verbal
abuse. Switching the robot to a sad, nervous or fearful emotional state actu-
ally increased the abuse. Moving to an angry and aggressive emotional state
seemed to create a newfound respect.
Older girls were generally gentle with the robot. Girls often touched the
robot, said soothing things to it, and were, on occasion, protective of the robot.
If an older girl did provoke Sparky a little and it switched into a sad emotion,
empathy was the result. It should be noted that although the responses for older
boys and girls were stereotypical, exceptions were rare.
Most adult interaction was collected in our lab. Adults tended to treat the
robot like an animal or a small child and generally gave the impression that
they were dealing with a living creature. Compared to children, they were less
engaged. Gender wasn’t a significant factor in determining adult responses.
Response to Sparky’s emotional palette was similar to the results with young
children and older girls.
In the lab, most adults quickly began to play with the robot. Some however,
were clearly unsure what to do. Many of these people eventually began to
experiment with the robot (see below).
As we reviewed our data, we found that certain behaviors showed up quite
often. These are catalogued below.

Many subjects touched the robot. This behavior was more prevalent in
young people, but was still common in adults as well. Once again, older
children had responses that varied with gender. Boys were rougher, more
likely to push it or cover its face. Girls tended to stroke and pet the robot.
Adult touching was more muted and not dependent on gender.

Subjects talked to the robot quite a bit. They sometimes interpreted the
robot for other people and “answered” the robot when it made vocal-
izations. They often heard the robot saying things that it hadn’t and
assumed that its speech was just poor, rather than by design. Users often
asked several questions of the robot, even if the robot ignored them. The
most common question was “what’s your name?”

It was very common for subjects to mimic some portion of the robot’s
motion. For instance, if the robot moved its head up and down in a
yes motion, subjects often copied the gesture in time with it. They also
copied the extension and withdrawal of the head and its motion patterns.

When a subject first engaged with the robot, s/he usually did so in one of
two ways. The active subject stood in front of the robot and did some-
thing that might attract attention (made a face, waved, said something).
The passive subject stood still until the robot acknowledged the subject’s