Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Socializing robots: constructing robotic sociality in the design and use of the assistive robot PARO

  • Original Article
  • Published:
AI & SOCIETY Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The goal of introducing robots into everyday use has led to their reconceptualization as social technologies, for which interacting with people is a fundamental and necessary function. Robot sociality in this context is generally defined as a set of individual properties of the artifact, such as a human-like appearance or the ability to read social cues. In this paper, we propose an alternative view of robot sociality as an emergent relational property of the interactions between the robot and its social context, actively constructed by designers, users, and other actors affected by robots. We illustrate this perspective through the example of the robot PARO, a commercial social robot commonly used in eldercare, which we analyzed in a series of observational studies of the social processes of its design in the laboratory and its use in an eldercare facility. Our analysis shows how the robot as a social technology is constructed through the actions and sense making of various actors and the situated dynamics of interaction in particular institutional contexts. We first describe the social factors and rationale that influenced PARO’s design in the laboratory, and then discuss how the robot is scaffolded by users in a nursing home in the midwestern United States. Our studies go beyond the typical focus on one-on-one interaction between people and robots as the unit of analysis of human–robot interaction, to incorporate the broader social context as a necessary component of the successful design and implementation of social robots in society.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Researchers are developing robots for use in environments like private homes (e.g., Forlizzi et al. 2004; Forlizzi 2007), schools (e.g., Tanaka et al. 2006; Kanda et al. 2007), nursing homes (e.g., Wada et al. 2010; Banks et al. 2008; Heerink et al. 2009; Sabelli et al. 2011; Khosla et al. 2012), hospitals (e.g., Mutlu and Forlizzi 2008), and malls (e.g., Kanda et al. 2009).

  2. The use of this term is inspired by Hutchins’ studies of human cognition as being distributed within a network of people, artifacts, concepts, and the environment. The first author has applied this notion to the analysis of human–robot interaction in prior work (Michalowski et al. 2007; Šabanović et al. 2006).

  3. These include Rodney Brooks’ concept that the “world is its own best model” (1991), Braitenberg’s (1984) “vehicles”—a conceptual series of robots that displayed simple behaviors (e.g., moving toward light) which could be interpreted by people as psychological states (e.g., fear of the dark), and the work of Japanese cognitive scientist Masanao Toda (1981).

  4. Kaplan (2004) suggests this practice of perfecting nature is a theme in Japanese culture that extends to robot design.

  5. A video of baby seals taken during this trip is displayed on PARO’s website alongside videos of PARO’s use in caregiving (http://www.parorobots.com/video.asp).

  6. PARO’s infant-like big eyes and soft rounded shape of the robot follow the “baby schema”—a set of facial and body features that scientists (e.g., Glocker et al 2009) have identified as making a person, animal, or thing seem “cute” and inspiring caregiving tendencies in adults.

  7. More information on the local cultural and social influences on PARO’s design can be found in Šabanovic (2014a).

  8. For a broader discussion on technological determinism in social robotics see Šabanović (2010).

  9. http://www.parorobots.com/.

  10. Methodological details and further results are reported in prior publications (Šabanović et al. 2013; Chang et al. 2014a, 2014b; Chang and Šabanović 2015).

  11. We have started pursuing this direction of study through participatory design of socially assistive robots with older adults (Šabanović et al. 2015).

References

  • Alač M, Movellan J, Tanaka F (2011) When a robot is social: spatial arrangements and multimodal semiotic engagement in the practice of social robotics. Soc Stud Sci 41:893–926. doi:10.1177/0306312711420565

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Banks MR, Willoughby LM, Banks WA (2008) Animal-assisted therapy and loneliness in nursing homes: use of robotic versus living dogs. J Am Med Dir Assoc 9:173–177. doi:10.1016/j.jamda.2007.11.007

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bijker WE, Hughes TP, Pinch T, Douglas DG (2012) The social construction of technological systems: new directions in the sociology and history of technology. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Boehner K, DePaula R, Dourish P, Sengers P (2005) Affect: from information to interaction. In: Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on critical computing: between sense and sensibility (CC ‘05). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 59–68

  • Braitenberg V (1984) Vehicles: Experiments in synthetic psychology. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Breazeal CL (2004) Designing sociable robots. MIT Press, Cambridge

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Broekens J, Heerink M, Rosendal H (2009) Assistive social robots in elderly care: a review. Gerontechnology. doi:10.4017/gt.2009.08.02.002.00

    Google Scholar 

  • Brooks RA (1991) Intelligence without reason. In: Proceedings of the international joint conference on artificial intelligence (IJCAI 1991), pp 569–595

  • Caporael LR (1997) The evolution of truly social cognition: the core configurations model. Personal Soc Psychol Rev 1:276–298. doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr0104_1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter J (2013) The quiet professional: an investigation of US military explosive ordnance disposal personnel interactions with everyday field robots. In: Doctoral dissertation, University of Washington

  • Chang WL, Šabanović S (2015) Interaction expands function: social shaping of the therapeutic robot PARO in a nursing home. In: Proceedings of the 10th annual ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction, pp 343–350

  • Chang W-L, Šabanović S, Huber L (2013) Situated analysis of interactions between cognitively impaired older adults and the therapeutic robot PARO. In: Proceedings of the international conference on social robotics. Springer, pp 371–380

  • Chang W-L, Šabanović S, Huber L (2014) Observational study of naturalistic interactions with the socially assistive robot PARO in a nursing home. In: Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE international symposium on robot and human interactive communication (RO-MAN 2014), Edinburgh, pp 294–299

  • Dautenhahn K, Ogden B, Quick T (2002) From embodied to socially embedded agents–implications for interaction-aware robots. Cogn Syst Res 3(3):397–428 (Chicago)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • European Commission (2012) Public attitudes towards robots: a report. http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_382_en.pdf. Accessed 27 June 2014

  • Feil-Seifer D, Matarić M (2005) Defining socially assistive robotics. In: Proceedings of the 9th international IEEE conference on rehabilitation robotics (ICORR 2005), pp 465–468

  • Fong T, Nourbakhsh I, Dautenhahn K (2003) A survey of socially interactive robots. Robot Auton Sys 42:143–166. doi:10.1016/S0921-8890(02)00372-X

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Forlizzi J (2007) How robotic products become social products: an ethnographic study of cleaning in the home. In: Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 129–136

  • Forlizzi J, DiSalvo C, Gemperle F (2004) Assistive robotics and an ecology of elders living independently in their homes. Hum Comput Interact 19:25–59. doi:10.1080/07370024.2004.9667339

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gates B (2007) A robot in every home. Sci Am 296(1):58–65

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glocker ML, Langleben DD, Ruparel K, Loughead JW, Gur RC, Sachser N (2009) Baby schema in infant faces induces cuteness perception and motivation for caretaking in adults. Ethology 115:257–263. doi:10.1111/j.1439-0310.2008.01603.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heerink M, Kröse B, Wielinga B, Evers V (2009) Measuring the influence of social abilities on acceptance of an interface robot and a screen agent by elderly users. In: Proceedings of the 23rd British HCI group annual conference on people and computers: celebrating people and technology. British computer society, Swinton, UK, pp 430–439

  • Hinds PJ, Roberts TL, Jones H (2004) Whose job is it anyway? A study of human-robot interaction in a collaborative task. Hum Comput Interact 19(1):151–181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Inoue K, Wada K, Ito Y (2008) Effective application of Paro: seal type robots for disabled people in according to ideas of occupational therapists. Lecture notes in computer science, vol. 5105. Springer, Berlin, pp 1321–1324

    Google Scholar 

  • Jaegher HD, Paolo ED (2007) Participatory sense-making. Phenomenol Cognit Sci 6:485–507. doi:10.1007/s11097-007-9076-9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kanda T, Sato R, Saiwaki N, Ishiguro H (2007) A two-month field trial in an elementary school for long-term human-robot interaction. IEEE Trans Rob 23:962–971. doi:10.1109/TRO.2007.904904

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan F (2004) Who is afraid of the humanoid? Investigating cultural differences in the acceptance of robots. Int J Humanoid Rob 1:465–480. doi:10.1142/S0219843604000289

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy J, Baxter P, Belpaeme T (2015) The robot who tried too hard: social behavior of a robot tutor can negatively affect child learning. In: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on human-robot interaction (HRI 2015), pp 67–74

  • Khosla R, Chu M-T, Kachouie R, et al (2012) Embodying care in Matilda: an affective communication robot for the elderly in Australia. In: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGHIT international health informatics symposium. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 295–304

  • Kidd CD, Taggart W, Turkle S (2006) A sociable robot to encourage social interaction among the elderly. IEEE Int Conf Robot Autom ICRA 2006:3972–3976

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein B, Gaedt L, Cook G (2013) Emotional robots: principles and experiences with Paro in Denmark, Germany, and the UK. GeroPsych J Gerontopsychol Geriatr Psychiatry 26:89–99. doi:10.1024/1662-9647/a000085

    Google Scholar 

  • MacKenzie DA, Wajcman J (1999) The social shaping of technology. Open University Press, Buckingham

  • Matsumoto N, Fujii H, Goan M, Okada M (2005). Minimal design strategy for embodied communication agents. In: Proceedings of the IEEE international symposium on robot and human interactive communication, pp 335–340

  • Michalowski MP, Šabanović S, DiSalvo C et al (2007) Socially distributed perception: GRACE plays social tag at AAAI 2005. Auton Robot 22:385–397. doi:10.1007/s10514-006-9015-6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mutlu B, Forlizzi J (2008) Robots in organizations: the role of workflow, social, and environmental factors in human-robot interaction. In: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE international conference on human robot interaction. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 287–294

  • National Science Foundation (2011) National robotics initiative. http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2015/nsf15505/nsf15505.htm. Accessed 24 Oct 2015

  • Oudshoorn N, Pinch T (2003) How users and non-users matter. In: Oudshoorn N, Pinch T (eds) How users matter: the co-construction of users and technologies. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, p vii

  • Pew Research Center (2014) U.S. views of technology and the future: science in the next 50 years. http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2014/04/US-Views-of-Technology-and-the-Future.pdf. Accessed 27 June 2014

  • Restivo S (2003) Robots’r’us: the sociology of social robots. In: Keynote lecture, Hixon/Riggs workshop on social studies of social robots, Harvey Mudd College

  • Robinson H, MacDonald B, Kerse N, Broadbent E (2013) The psychosocial effects of a companion robot: a randomized controlled trial. J Am Med Dir Assoc 14:661–667. doi:10.1016/j.jamda.2013.02.007

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Šabanović S (2010) Robots in society, society in robots—mutual shaping of society and technology as a framework for social robot design. Int J Soc Robot 2:439–450. doi:10.1007/s12369-010-0066-7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Šabanović S (2014) Inventing Japan’s ‘robotics culture’: the repeated assembly of science, technology, and culture in social robotics. Soc Stud Sci 44(3):342–367

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Šabanović S, Michalowski MP, Simmons R (2006) Robots in the wild: observing human-robot social interaction outside the lab. In: IEEE international workshop on advanced motion control, 2006, pp 596–601

  • Šabanović S, Bennett CC, Chang W-L, Huber L (2013) PARO robot affects diverse interaction modalities in group sensory therapy for older adults with dementia. In: Proceedings of the international conference on rehabilitation robotics, pp 1–6

  • Šabanović S, Reeder S, Kechavarzi B (2014) Designing robots in the wild: in situ prototype evaluation for a break management robot. J Hum Robot Interact 3(1):70–88

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Šabanović S, Chang W-L, Bennett CC, Piatt JA, Hakken D (2015) A robot of my own: participatory design of socially assistive robots for independently living older adults diagnosed with depression. In: Proceedings of the 17th international conference on human computer interaction HCII 2015

  • Sabelli AM, Kanda T, Hagita N (2011) A conversational robot in an elderly care center: an ethnographic study. In: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on human–robot interaction. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 37–44

  • Schaal S (2007) The new robotics—towards human-centered machines. HFSP J 1(2):115–126

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shibata T (2012) Therapeutic seal robot as biofeedback medical device: qualitative and quantitative evaluations of robot therapy in dementia care. Proc IEEE 100(8):2527–2538

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shibata T, Tanie K (2000) Influence of a-priori knowledge in subjective interpretation and evaluation by short-term interaction with mental commit robot. In: Proceedings of the IEEE international conference on intelligent systems, pp 169–174

  • Shibata T, Tashima T, Tanie K (1999) Emergence of emotional behavior through physical interaction between human and robot. In: 1999 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, 1999, vol 4, pp 2868–2873

  • Suchman L (2007) Human-machine reconfigurations: plans and situated actions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Sung J, Grinter RE, Christensen HI (2009) “Pimp My Roomba”: designing for personalization. In: Proceedings of the 27th international conference on human factors in computing systems CHI 2009. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 193–196

  • Taggart W, Turkle S, Kidd CD (2005) An interactive robot in a nursing home: preliminary remarks. In: Towards social mechanisms of android science: a COGSCI workshop

  • Tanaka F, Movellan JR, Fortenberry B, Aisaka K (2006) Daily HRI evaluation at a classroom environment: reports from dance interaction experiments. In: Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI/SIGART conference on human–robot interaction. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 3–9

  • Toda M (1981) Man, robot, and society: models and speculations. Kluwer Academic Publishing, Norwell, MA

  • Turkle S (2006) A nascent robotics culture: new complicities for companionship. Online article. Retrieved January 6. http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/pdfsforstwebpage/ST_Nascent%20Robotics%20Culture.pdf

  • Vertesi J (2012) Seeing like a Rover: visualization, embodiment, and interaction on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Soc Stud Sci 42:393–414. doi:10.1177/0306312712444645

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wada K, Shibata T (2007) Living with seal robots -Its sociopsychological and physiological influences on the elderly at a care house. IEEE Trans Rob 23:972–980. doi:10.1109/TRO.2007.906261

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wada K, Shibata T, Saito T, Tanie K (2004) Effects of robot-assisted activity for elderly people and nurses at a day service center. Proc IEEE 92:1780–1788. doi:10.1109/JPROC.2004.83537

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wada K, Shibata T, Saito T, Sakamoto K and Tanie K (2005) Psychological and social effects of 1 year robot assisted activity on elderly people at a health service facility for the aged. In: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation ICRA 2005, pp 2785–2790

  • Wada K, Shibata T, Kawaguchi Y (2009) Long-term robot therapy in a health service facility for the aged-A case study for 5 years. IEEE Int Conf Rehabil Robot ICORR 2009:930–933

    Google Scholar 

  • Wada K, Ikeda Y, Inoue K, Uehara R (2010) Development and preliminary evaluation of a caregiver’s manual for robot therapy using the therapeutic seal robot Paro. In: Proceedings of the 19th IEEE international symposium on robot and human interactive communication (RO-MAN 2010), pp 533–538

  • Wada K, Kouzuki Y, Inoue K (2012) Field test of manual for robot therapy using seal robot. IEEE/RAS/EMBS Int Conf Biomed Robot Biomech BioRob 2012:234–239

    Google Scholar 

  • Yamaji Y, Miyake T, Yoshiike Y, De Silva PRS, Okada M (2011) STB: child-dependent sociable trash box. Int J Soc Robot 3(4):359–370

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yoshikawa H (2009). Full research and social contract. In: AIST today international, 8th edition, pp 2–6

Download references

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Takanori Shibata for hosting the first author in his laboratory and the loan of a PARO robot to our laboratory for research purposes. We are also grateful to the participants and nursing home staff for assistance, to our colleagues C. C. Bennett, P. Lopes and M. Grant for their help in implementing the studies, and to M. R. Francisco for his comments on drafts of this article. The research was supported by National Science Foundation Grants SES-0522630 and IIS-1143712.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University Bloomington, 919 E 10th Street, Bloomington, IN, 47408, USA

    Selma Šabanović & Wan-Ling Chang

Authors
  1. Selma Šabanović
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Wan-Ling Chang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Selma Šabanović.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Šabanović, S., Chang, WL. Socializing robots: constructing robotic sociality in the design and use of the assistive robot PARO. AI & Soc 31, 537–551 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0636-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0636-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation