Page 196 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

Experiences with Sparky, a Social Robot 179

inappropriate. A friendly robot usually prompted subjects to touch the robot,
mimic its motions and speak out loud to it. With the exception of older boys, a
sad, nervous or afraid robot generally provoked a compassionate response.
Our interactions with users showed a potential need for future (autonomous)
social robots to have a somewhat different sensory suite than current devices.
For instance, we found it very helpful in creating a rich interaction to “sense”
the location of bodies, faces and even individual eyes on users. We also found
it helpful to read basic facial expressions, such as smiles and frowns. This
argues for a more sophisticated vision system, one focused on dealing with
people. Additionally, it seemed essential to know where the robot was being
touched. This may mean the development of a better artificial skin for robots.
If possessed by an autonomous robot, the types of sensing listed above would
support many of the behaviors that users found so compelling when interacting
with a teleoperated Sparky.
Fortunately, there are some traditional robotic skills that Sparky, if it were
autonomous, might not need. For instance, there was no particular need for ad-
vanced mapping or navigation and no need, at least as a purely social creature,
for detailed planning. A robot that could pay attention to people in its field of
view and had enough navigation to avoid bumping into objects would probably
do quite well in this human sphere. Even if future robots did occasionally bump
into things or get lost, it shouldn’t be a problem: Sparky was often perceived
as acting reasonably even when a serious control malfunction left it behaving
erratically. When the goal is to be perceived as “intelligent”, there are usually
many acceptable actions for a given situation. Though it will be challenging
to build these new social capabilities into mobile robots, humans are perhaps a
more forgiving environment than roboticists are accustomed to.
We close on a speculative, and perhaps whimsical, note. Users interacted
with Sparky using their bodies and, in turn, received feedback using this same,
nearly universal, body language. This left us thinking not only of robots, but
also of the general question of communication in computer interfaces. What
if these human-robot interactions were abstracted and moved into other realms
and into other devices? For instance, the gestures of head motion and gaze
direction could map readily to a device’s success at paying attention to a user.
Similarly, Sparky could intuitively demonstrate a certain energy level using its
posture and pace. Could another device use this technique to show its battery
state? Though our research didn’t focus on these questions, we believe this
could be fertile ground for future work.

Notes

∗ Contact author: mark@markscheeff.com.