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Becoming Real: An Anthropological Approach to Evaluating Robots in the Real World

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10652))

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Abstract

This paper proposes an alternative approach to evaluating Human- Robot Interaction (HRI), drawing on the field of Anthropology. Considering the user in the traditional robot-environment dyad has major practical and philosophical implications. This paper contends that the traditional scientific method, by itself, is not sufficient to account for the complexity and social nature of the interaction. Instead, it should be complemented with exploratory, ethnographic and reflexive research in order to make additional philosophical, practical and ethical contributions. The HRI evaluation model proposed in this paper builds on existing HRI models and draws on theories and methodologies from the field of Anthropology. It applies a ‘refunctioned’ approach to ethnography, in which roboticists and anthropologists collaborate to evaluate robot interactions from an ethnographic, experimental and ethical perspective to reconcile three distinct ontological views of the user experience: robot-centric, human-centred, and societal impact. The model represents a formative approach to evaluation, in which early-stage explorative and empirical data is used to capture a holistic view of the interaction. This descriptive data may subsequently be parsed to develop specific and testable hypotheses and design principles.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Maynooth University, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland

    Louise Veling

Authors
  1. Louise Veling
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Louise Veling .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS-AIST JRL, Tsukuba, Japan

    Abderrahmane Kheddar

  2. CNRS-AIST JRL, Tsukuba, Japan

    Eiichi Yoshida

  3. The National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

  4. University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Kenji Suzuki

  5. Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan

  6. CITEC, Bielefeld, Germany

    Friederike Eyssel

  7. Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, USA

    Hongsheng He

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Veling, L. (2017). Becoming Real: An Anthropological Approach to Evaluating Robots in the Real World. In: Kheddar, A., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10652. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70022-9_63

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70022-9_63

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70021-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70022-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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