Abstract
In an effort to explore human response to a socially competent embodied agent, we have a built a life-like teleoperated robot. Our robot uses motion, gesture and sound to be social with people in its immediate vicinity. We explored human-robot interaction in both private and public settings. Our users enjoyed interacting with Sparky and treated it as a living thing. Children showed more engagement than adults, though both groups touched, mimicked and spoke to the robot and often wondered openly a bout its intentions and capabilities. Evidence from our experiences with a teleoperated robot showed a need for next-generation autonomous social robots to develop more sophisticated sensory modalities that are better able to pay attention to people.
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Scheeff, M., Pinto, J., Rahardja, K., Snibbe, S., Tow, R. (2002). Experiences with Sparky, a Social Robot. In: Dautenhahn, K., Bond, A., Cañamero, L., Edmonds, B. (eds) Socially Intelligent Agents. Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies, and Simulated Organizations, vol 3. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47373-9_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47373-9_21
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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