To Make a Social Robot, Key Is Satisfying the Human Mind
From: Kavli Foundation - 02/03/2012

The Kavli Foundation recently brought together three pioneers in human-robot
interactions to discuss advancements in social robotics, as well as the
technological hurdles the field will face in the future. One of the keys for
a successfully designed social robot is considering how it communicates
verbally as well as physically through facial expressions and body language,
says University of Southern California professor Maja Mataric. Another key is
matching a robot's appearance to a human's perception of its abilities.
University of California, San Diego professor Ayse Saygin found that as
people observed highly human-like robots compared to less human-like robots,
the brain detected the difference and did not respond well. "We found that
when we matched the personality of the robot to that of the user, people
performed their rehab exercises longer and reported enjoying them more,"
Mataric says. A social robot also should be able to learn socially, and
Georgia Tech professor Andrea Thomaz has developed a robot that can learn
from humans through speech, observation, demonstration, and social
interaction. Thomaz says she is working to build the key components of social
intelligence into her robots. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120203101153.htm

Links:
Kavli Foundation
http://www.kavlifoundation.org/

Maja Mataric
http://robotics.usc.edu/~maja/

Ayse Saygin
http://www.sayginlab.org/apsaygin.html

Andrea Thomaz
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~athomaz/

Roundtable discussion
http://www.kavlifoundation.org/science-spotlights/ucsd-recipe-social-robot