4.2. Entertainment

Entertainment robots (autonomous or remote controlled) include toys, pets, companions, cars and drones etc. While the interactions with robots like cars or drones are not expected to be humanoid, toys and pets (companions) are expected to interpret and behave as close as possible to their real world equivalents. Such robots directly target the consumers and hence cost is the most important parameter in designing entertainment robots. Optimizing the cost in the competitive robot market, in some cases, may result in comprising on the technology. Among popular toy robots is 'My Real Baby' developed by iRobot in partnership with a toy manufacturer. The robot is an expressive and responsive toy doll which can smile, laugh and

Figure 4. Zoomorphic robots: (a) AIBO, (b) iDog, (c) Cheetah.

imitate infant sounds. While such animated toy robots require their human masters to look after them, pet or companion robots are more autonomous. Mobility is one of the prime concerns in such companion (quadruped and wheeled) robots. Among these, AIBO [45] by Sony is one of the most advanced pet robots in the market that imitates the relationship between man and a pet dog. First introduced in 1999 in the market, different models were produced till 2005. One of the most sophisticated consumer robots, AIBO could respond to over 100 voice commands, learn to walk and play with a ball. Other similar pet robots include Poo-Chi, Pleo, iDog, Genibo and FIDO. In addition to entertainment, companion robots have also been designed for military and research purposes. Examples include Rhex, Canid, Cheetah, SCARAB, Rise and Titan. Figure 4 shows some of the popular zoomorphic robots.

#### 4.3. Healthcare

psycho-physiological measures and task performance metrics. Strengths and weaknesses of

Efforts have been done to outline some secondary methodologies like ease of classification, passive-social medium, numerical analysis of body movements and proximity theories for improved evaluation of HRI. Nevertheless due to the complexity of human robot social interaction researchers suggests the use of combination of more than one of the existing methodol-

In addition to research purposes, social robots find applications in a variety of problem areas

While a number of social robots have been designed to serve as test beds to evaluate the technological advancements in the design of social robots, a number of robots have been used as test subjects to replace humans. Social robots present an attractive alternative to humans to serve as test subjects in a number of experimental settings especially those involving risks, privacy or ethical issues [42, 43]. Likewise, operations which are difficult or controversial to carry out on humans can be performed on social robots. Not only human biasness can be avoided but evaluations can be repeatedly performed under identical conditions. Such social robots can serve as subjects to evaluate social interactions and study their influence on cognition. Among one of the early contributions, Kismet, a robot head designed by Breazeal [44] in the late 90s for affective computing, has been employed to study caregiver behavior among infants. Likewise, infanoid is an infant-like humanoid robot that has been used to study social development in the children. Its abilities to detect humans and objects, extract emotions of the interacting partner and imitate human voice allows its usage in investigating the development of social learning skills. Similarly, Cog, a well-known humanoid robot has been employed to evaluate the behavioral and learning models. Another widely used humanoid robot test bed is iCub that articulates a 3.5 years old child and has been designed to support research in

Entertainment robots (autonomous or remote controlled) include toys, pets, companions, cars and drones etc. While the interactions with robots like cars or drones are not expected to be humanoid, toys and pets (companions) are expected to interpret and behave as close as possible to their real world equivalents. Such robots directly target the consumers and hence cost is the most important parameter in designing entertainment robots. Optimizing the cost in the competitive robot market, in some cases, may result in comprising on the technology. Among popular toy robots is 'My Real Baby' developed by iRobot in partnership with a toy manufacturer. The robot is an expressive and responsive toy doll which can smile, laugh and

these methods are summarized in Table 1.

14 Human-Robot Interaction - Theory and Application

4. Application areas

4.1. Social robots in research

ogies till empirical research can be mapped in theoretical concepts.

including education, health care and entertainment.

cognitive functioning and artificial intelligence.

4.2. Entertainment

While surgical robots have been serving the medical sector for a long time, the relatively recent idea of employing social robots in the health sector has also been widely employed [46] for application like rehabilitation, elderly assistance and therapy etc. (Figure 5a). Researchers have investigated the possibilities of employing robots to educate and enhance the communication

Figure 5. Social robots in: (a) health care, (b) service, (c) education.

skill of children with disabilities. Likewise, social robots have also been useful as coaches for physical exercises and following diet plans. A well-known example of a coaching robot is Autom [47] that is designed to be a weight loss coach. Another similar robot, iRobiQ, monitors hypertension, manages medication and issues reminders. A wide variety of assistive social robots for elderly care have also been designed ranging from robotic wheelchairs to companion robots attempting to compensate the loss of a family member. Experiments with Paro, the therapeutic robot, revealed that the presence of a social robot in an old home increased the number of interactions among the elderly residents.

5. Challenges

Despite the emergent technological solutions at hand and conceptualizations regarding acceptability, there are considerable challenges to be addressed before social believability in robots can be considered a success. Literature [52, 53] suggests that the integration of social robots in

Socially Believable Robots

17

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71375

In contrast to their successors, the industrial robots that are designed to carry out routine tasks in controlled environments and the field robots that work in places beyond human reach, social robots are expected to operate in a highly unpredictable and diverse habitat with its habitants that share the same traits. According to Salter et al. [54], real-world environments can prove to be both beneficial as well as challenging test grounds for assessing the capabilities of a robotic device. A gap still exists between the performance of an intelligent agent in a controlled environment and that in a real-world scenario. Limitations in replication of most human robot interaction (HRI) scenarios greatly attribute in average adaptation of social robots in real-world situations. Empirical studies like [55], which investigate robots' acceptability and usability, explain the complexity of social situations and dimensions of HRI beyond the domestic vacuum cleaning robots. The capacity of a social robot to contextually understand the behaviors of the real world, its response to subjective experiences and user feedback

human society poses both social and technical problems.

5.1. Complexity of social situations and ethics

Figure 6. Mori's Uncanny Valley theory [8].

#### 4.4. Service

Service robots are designed to assist human beings in doing everyday tasks including household chores (Figure 5b). Examples of these robots include PatrolBot for delivery, security, monitoring and guidance, Gita for cargo carrying, Roomba that serves as a vacuum cleaner, Sanbot that provide passenger services at airport and many more. Likewise, social robots like Rhino and Mobot have been designed to serve as guides for tourists. Severinson-Eklundh et al. [48] discuss the interaction models between humans and service robots using Cero as an example. The authors conclude that for satisfactory interactive sessions, the design considerations, in addition to the primary user of the service robot, should also take into account the group of people in the environment where the robot is intended to provide its services. Likewise, authors in [49] discuss the design issues interaction between humans and domestic robots using Roomba vacuum cleaner as a case study. The authors investigate the possibilities of smoothly 'fitting' such service robots in the home environment. A multi-modal design based on vision and speech is proposed in [50]. Though the models are discussed with service robots as applications, the authors claim that the proposed interaction cycle can be applied to general man-machine interaction scenarios as well.

#### 4.5. Education

Beyond health care and services, robots have increasingly been used in the education sector as well. While introduction of robots in class room teaching makes the lectures interesting in the elementary schools, robots have been effectively employed in the higher educational institutes as well. Students of medicine, for instance, can perform complicated medical procedures on humanoid robots. Likewise, engineering students can use robots in complex or dangerous experimental or real world scenarios. One such popular educational robot is NAO (Figure 5c) developed by SoftBank Robotics. In addition to general education, NAO robots have also been employed to interact with autistic children. Robots can also serve as proxies both for students and teachers in case they are not able to attend the classes. A well-known series of such education robots has been designed by VGoRobotics. A key concern in using robots as teachers is the replacement of interpersonal relationships. Such robots also need to detect and adapt to the social mood of the environment they are deployed in. Some researchers argue that robots at elementary schools must change their behavior as a function of the activities of the children. A comprehensive review of the applicability of robots in education can be found in [51].
