Page 195 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

178 Socially Intelligent Agents

presence. Essentially, the passive subject waited to be acknowledged by
the robot, while the active subject courted a response.

Some subjects, mostly adults, spent time trying to understand the robot’s
capabilities better. For instance, subjects would snap their fingers to see
if the robot would orient to the sound, or they would move their hands
and bodies to see if the robot could follow them.

5.2 Interview response
Formal subject feedback was collected in the lab testing. Overall, sub-
jects liked interacting with the robot and used such adjectives as “fun”, “neat”,
“cool”, “interesting” and “wild”. The responsiveness of the robot in its move-
ment and emotions was cited as compelling. In particular, subjects often men-
tioned that they liked how the robot would track them around the room and
even look into their eyes. Subjects commented that the robot reminded them
of a pet or a young child.
For some, primarily adults, motivation was a confusing issue. Though they
typically could understand what the robot was expressing, subjects sometimes
did not know why the robot acted a certain way. Also, vocalizations of the robot
were not generally liked, though there were exceptions. Most found Sparky’s
muffled tone frustrating as they expected to be able to understand the words,
but couldn’t (by design, ironically).

5.3 Operating the robot
One of our project goals was to understand what new skills a social robot
would need to learn. We therefore noted what our operators did as well.
Though it was not surprising, operators consistently got the best engagement
by orienting the robot to the person. The robot’s face pointed to the human’s
face and, moreover, we consistently found it valuable to look directly into the
human’s eyes. Being able to read the basic affect of human faces was also
valuable.
Operators also found themselves having to deal with the robot’s close prox-
imity to many quickly moving humans. Users expected Sparky to know that
they were there. For instance, if they touched Sparky somewhere, they ex-
pected it to know that and act accordingly (not move in that direction, turn its
head to look at them, etc.).

6. Discussion and Conclusions

Users enjoyed interacting with Sparky and treated it as a living thing, usually
a pet or young child. Kids were more engaged than adults and had responses
that varied with gender and age. No one seemed to find the robot disturbing or