[Synapse elist] Robotics: Engagement, Trust and Intimacy: Are these the essential elements for a ‘successful’ interaction between a human and a robot?

[Mari Velonaki]

Dear all,

We (CSR team) have recently  organised a panel for the AAAI 2008  
Spring Symposium on Emotion, Personality, and Social Behavior at  
Stanford University.
Our panel was entitled Engagement, Trust and Intimacy: Are these the  
essential elements for a ‘successful’ interaction between a human and  
a robot?

As the capability of robots increases, and interactions between  
humans and machines become more complex, it is important for  
researchers to consider the potential for an emotional connection to  
be established between a human and a machine.
The panel was  focused specifically on questions such as
•	What is trust, and can you share it with a machine?
•	What is intimacy, and can you share it with a machine?
•	How do theories of behavior from different perspectives assist in  
understanding our complex relationships with robots?

There is currently wide interdisciplinary interest in the simulation,  
representation and integration of emotional characteristics within  
machines. The panel engaged researchers from the fields of artificial  
intelligence, robotics and cognitive science.

The conference participants were mainly AI researchers, roboticists,  
psychologists and psychiatrists. What was impressive for me was how  
passionate  people became when the question of 'what constitutes a  
person' was raised.
The audience was then divided into two groups:  The ones that firmly  
believed that a robot could never become a 'person' and those who  
held the counter-view - that a robot through experiencing and  
learning from its environment could
become a 'person'.

As an artist, what has always been important for me was to create a  
'sense of a person' through technology (and now robotics) that comes  
alive when people interact with it.


mari




Mari Velonaki
Media art & Interface design

Centre for Social Robotics
Australian Centre for Field Robotics
ARC Centre of Excellence in Autonomous Systems
The Rose Street Building  J04
The University of Sydney  2006, Australia
  www.acfr.usyd.edu.au
  Ph:  +61-2-9351-5847     Fax:  +61-2-9351-  7474


On 05/04/2008, at 7:58 PM, Shuhei Miyashita wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> nice to talk to you, my name is Shuhei Miyashita,
> a roboticist working on self-assembly robots.
> I enjoy the topics and feel excited to discuss with you.
>
> My robot is so to say, 3cm-size floating bumping cars, which can
> self-assemble on a water surface.
> So CA, Life game, such a ALife-related work also sound familiar to me.
>
> My major was Electrical and Electronics Engineer and I was educated
> (in Tokyotech) by Professor Satoshi Murata, who is a specialist of
> developing modular robots.
>
> Currently I am working on building such self-assembly robots under a
> supervision of Prof. Rolf Pfeifer in Artificial Intelligence Lab,
> University of Zurich.
>
> I hope I can introduce some issues from different angles,
> as engineer, as Japanese, or as in a different generation(?)
> in parallel to having fun listening to different perspectives.
>
> Looking forward to the discussion!
>
>
> Shuhei
>
>
>
> -- 
>  Shuhei MIYASHITA,  Ph.D. candidate
>   Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Switzerland
>   miya at ifi.uzh.ch  /  http://shuhei.net/
>
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> elist mailing list
> elist at synapse.net.au
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