**Socially Believable Robots** Socially Believable Robots

Momina Moetesum and Imran Siddiqi

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Momina Moetesum and Imran Siddiqi

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71375 Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

#### Abstract

Long-term companionship, emotional attachment and realistic interaction with robots have always been the ultimate sign of technological advancement projected by sci-fi literature and entertainment industry. With the advent of artificial intelligence, we have indeed stepped into an era of socially believable robots or humanoids. Affective computing has enabled the deployment of emotional or social robots to a certain level in social settings like informatics, customer services and health care. Nevertheless, social believability of a robot is communicated through its physical embodiment and natural expressiveness. With each passing year, innovations in chemical and mechanical engineering have facilitated life-like embodiments of robotics; however, still much work is required for developing a "social intelligence" in a robot in order to maintain the illusion of dealing with a real human being. This chapter is a collection of research studies on the modeling of complex autonomous systems. It will further shed light on how different social settings require different levels of social intelligence and what are the implications of integrating a socially and emotionally believable machine in a society driven by behaviors and actions.

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.71375

Keywords: social robots, human computer interaction, social intelligence, cognitive systems, anthropomorphism, humanoids, roboethics

### 1. Introduction

Robots have been an important part of the industrial setups around the globe for many years now. For many industrial operations, robots have completely or partially replaced the human operators and their involvement is likely to grow manifolds in the years to come. Nevertheless, in most cases, these robots operate in a controlled work environment and their interaction with humans remains fairly limited. The recent advancements in the hardware (actuators, sensors, etc.) and software technologies (computer vision, artificial intelligence, etc.), however, have paved way for involvement of robots in our daily life, both at work place and home. Such

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© The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

robots, contrary to the industrial robots, naturally require more interactions with humans and have to be designed accordingly. The term "social robot" was coined jointly by researchers in artificial intelligence and robotics in the early 90s and refers to the robots engaging in social interactions with the humans. Studies [1, 2] define social robots as autonomous agents designed to interact with humans and possibly other robots exhibiting the expected social behaviors of the assigned role. Such interactions, in addition to the primary expected tasks, involve communication, recognition of individuals, familiarization with the environment and adapting accordingly to the variety of situations encountered. In order to enable them to interact socially, these robots need to be equipped with what is generally termed as "social intelligence". Lazzeri et al. [3] argue that this social intelligence enables robots not only to converse with humans (and other robots) but also interpret the emotional signals and react accordingly hence producing an impression of a real human being. In addition to the conventional role of serving humans, other typical roles include providing guidance or assistance at homes, offices or public places, provide companionship and care services and serve as pets. The expectations from a social robot naturally vary as the function of the role it takes.

socially interfaced robots, for instance guides at the airports, provide human-like conversational interaction that in addition to speech also involves body language and facial expressions. Socially receptive robots learn and enhance their social intelligence through interactions while sociable robots are highly participative to satisfy their own social aims. In addition to these four categories, Fong et al. [1] have identified three further categories including "socially situated", "socially embedded" and "socially intelligent" robots. They further describe a new breed of social robots called "socially interactive robots" that comprise of some common attributes with additional distinctive characteristics of their own. Based on the different categorizations suggested in the literature, we can identify taxonomy of social robots as illustrated in Figure 1. This chapter is dedicated to a discussion on the design considerations and applications of socially believable robots with a discussion on the associated challenges and the future prospects. Case studies and examples of social robots in entertainment, health and

Socially Believable Robots

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

Every passing decade is forcing robot designers and engineers to push their skills to the limit. As robots integrate further into our lives, high expectations are posing new challenges in their creation. All robots, whether industrial, field or social, must address a number of design issues. However factors of social believability and social intelligence increase the complexity of designing a socially interactive robot. One of the foremost conditions of believability in a social robot is its near realistic embodiment, to which users can relate without reluctance or discomfort. Secondly a socially interactive robot is expected to be expressive in terms of rich dialog, emotions and gestures. In addition to expressiveness, a social robot is required to manifest social behavior which includes perception of its surroundings and ability to plan and execute appropriate goal oriented actions. Variance in social situations and expected performance outcomes make it difficult to generalize design strategy for a social robot. Nevertheless designers broadly divide design approaches into two categories i.e. Bio-inspired and Function-inspired [1]. Bio-inspired design strategies are a multitude of disciplines like anthropology, cognition, psychology and sociology. On the other hand function-inspired approaches focus on task oriented designs. However, realizing the gap between available technology and performance expectations is of

According to Fong et al. [1], a robot's visual appearance is the first projection of its believability. People establish performance expectations based on a robot's outlook. In a way, physical embodiment influences human robot interactions as people interact with humanoids differently from non-humanoids. Other than expectations, a robot's morphology plays a vital role in its usability, acceptability and expressiveness. Therefore it is required that a robot's morphology should correlate to its proposed functionality. For instance, robots that are intended to

education will also be discussed.

2. Design considerations

prime significance.

2.1. Embodiment and expressiveness

Breazeal [4] argues that humans tend to anthropomorphize robots for interaction and identifies four classes of social robots. These include "socially evocative", "social interface", "socially receptive" and "sociable robots". Socially evocative robots, for instance toy robots, are designed to engage in entertaining interactive sessions with the humans. According to him,

Figure 1. Taxonomy of social robots in literature.

socially interfaced robots, for instance guides at the airports, provide human-like conversational interaction that in addition to speech also involves body language and facial expressions. Socially receptive robots learn and enhance their social intelligence through interactions while sociable robots are highly participative to satisfy their own social aims. In addition to these four categories, Fong et al. [1] have identified three further categories including "socially situated", "socially embedded" and "socially intelligent" robots. They further describe a new breed of social robots called "socially interactive robots" that comprise of some common attributes with additional distinctive characteristics of their own. Based on the different categorizations suggested in the literature, we can identify taxonomy of social robots as illustrated in Figure 1. This chapter is dedicated to a discussion on the design considerations and applications of socially believable robots with a discussion on the associated challenges and the future prospects. Case studies and examples of social robots in entertainment, health and education will also be discussed.
