Analysis: bridging the gap between humans and robots is a question of artificial intelligence, robotics, design and philosophy
It can't be denied that people have a growing desire to interact with robots. Human-robot Interaction (HRI) is an interdisciplinary field, related to various disciplines including human-computer interaction (HCI), robotics, artificial intelligence, design, and philosophy. HRI is a unique discipline, concerned with building a concept, methods and framework to interact with humans smoothly and naturally.
HRI has been the subject of great interest since the 1940s. Science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov was the one who coined the term "robotics". He also raised three questions within his stories to emphasise the relationship between humans and robots: "How much will people trust robots?", "What kind of relationship can a person have with a robot?" and "How do our ideas of what is human change when I have machines doing human-like things in our midst?". These questions are still relevant to the research and industry areas today.
When we talk about HRI, the "social robot" cannot be ignored. In 1978, the term "social robot" was first mentioned in the context of robotics in an article in the Interface Age magazine. The "social robot" is a robot that has the social skills to handle human conversations in a domestic setting. A number of social robots have been created since then to play different roles in the human world.
From Wired, here's how the My Keepon toy version of the robot works
One example is the Kismet robot, designed in the 1990s by MIT, which played the role of an "infant" in that it was assisted and taught by a human caretaker. Subsequently, there was the playful Keepon robot that was designed by BeatBots to interact with children. In the last decade, robots such as the Nao and Pepper humanoid robots from Softbank Robotics have commonly been seen in customer assistance roles such as greeting robots in banking, healthcare, education, and retail.
HRI is distinguished from the field of pure robotics, wherein physical robots are designed to manipulate physical tasks -- also called physical interaction. For example, food-serving robots were used in the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022. These physical robots can cook food, make coffee, serve cocktails and deliver these to the customers who need them. Thanks to these physical interventions, people can effectively reduce the chance of social contact to avoid the possibility of COVID-19 transmission.
From Humber River Hospital Foundation, humanoid robot Pepper helps patients and their families throughout the hospital
In contrast, social robots interact with humans across diverse domains. Examples of this include tutors for children's study and online learning, tour guides in a museum, and health assistants. Thus, HRI is an activity by which social robots interact with people in a human world through natural mechanisms. These robots should be designed such that they follow social rules in physical environments to make people feel safe and comfortable, and even help users develop a strong enthusiasm for interaction with the robot.
So, how do we develop a social robot to satisfy people's increasing demands in the social world? Of course, conversation, including verbal and nonverbal interaction (i.e. eye gaze, head pose, facial expression etc.), is an essential way of communicating in our daily social lives. Cognitive scientist Dr Susan Brennan defined the term conversation as: "A joint activity in which two or more participants use linguistic forms and nonverbal signals to communicate interactively". Appropriately, in human-to-social robot interaction, the conversational capabilities of social robots are often considered the principal functionalities for designing effective natural interaction.
To ensure that users, meaning humans, continue to engage in the interaction process with the social robot, a smooth and fluid conversation is necessary in HRI. Conversational HRI should be designed to include appropriate responses to the words, mental states, and related emotions of the interlocutor, meaning the person talking to the robot. People's emotions, undoubtedly, can stimulate and modulate their behaviour during ongoing experiences.
Generally speaking, the HRI research scholars try to study and develop HRI using three different approaches: (1) Human-centred approaches are to understand the characteristics of human behaviours, the HRI design observes the features and limits of human behaviours and perception, whereas the robot is to stimulate different situations to provoke a measurable response; (2) Design-focused approaches to social robot creation focus on designing a robot, particularly the humanoid robot, with multiple behaviours, for example head movements and gaze, to align with human attention. Using the robot Keepon as an example again, this is a minimal social robot that expresses its attention and affect using gaze and reactive motion; And, (3) building computational tools for the robot's eye gaze generation in HRI tends to be a technology-focused approach, which focuses on mathematical or technical contributions, but does not tend to focus on the measurement of the interaction effects in a robotics system.
Would you prefer having a robot to take care of your parents or a human nurse? Do you hope for a robot that can be customised based on your preferences as your companion in your life? Or would you like a robot as your personal teacher instead of a human teacher? Before saying "Yes", we have to think about the related ethical issues.
Indeed, the ethical issues in robotics have long been considered by both robotics and philosophers. The ethical rules have even been discussed and developed in popular literature. In particular, the concept of the Three Laws of Robotics is well-known and was developed by Isaac Asimov: "(1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.".
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Mike McCartney reports on Bella the Robot, a "waitress with an attitude" in Cp Mayo
Recently, in order to raise awareness of ethics in HRI, scholars have formulated a new five "Principles of Robotics", which recognise the shortcomings of Asimov's useful but "fictional" devices from his stories.
The potential users of social robots will also be from different societies, with different cultural values and norms. Therefore, those cultural backgrounds and values will influence the people' perspectives and responses to robots. As for HRI study, designers, developers and researchers should be either aware of designing localised social robots to interact with people in different societies, or they may think about challenging these practices and norms in the human world, which remains a heavily discussed area.
The HRI technologies and products have told us that HRI is a bridge between humans and robots to build safer and more personalised social robots into our daily life. So, are you ready to have your own robot?
Na Li is looking for potential participants to participate in her HRI experiment. All participants will have a wonderful experience interacting with her Pepper robot. If interested, please sign up here.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
