Embodiment in Socially Interactive Robots

Abstract

Physical embodiment is a required component for robots that are structurally coupled with their real-world environments. However, most socially interactive robots do not need to physically interact with their environments in order to perform their tasks. When and why should embodied robots be used instead of simpler and cheaper virtual agents?This paper reviews the existing work that explores the role of physical embodiment in socially interactive robots. This class consists of robots that are not only capable of engaging in social interaction with humans, but are using primarily their social capabilities to perform their desired functions. Socially interactive robots provide entertainment, information, and/or assistance; this last category is typically encompassed by socially assistive robotics. In all cases, such robots can achieve their primary functions without performing functional physical work.To comprehensively evaluate the existing body of work on embodiment, we first review work from established related fields including psychology, philosophy, and sociology. We then systematically review 65 studies evaluating aspects of embodiment published from 2003 to 2017 in major peer-reviewed robotics publication venues. We examine relevant aspects of the selected studies, focusing on the embodiments compared, tasks evaluated, social roles of robots, and measurements. We introduce three taxonomies for the types of robot embodiment, robot social roles, and human-robot tasks. These taxonomies are used to deconstruct the design and interaction spaces of socially interactive robots and facilitate analysis and discussion of the reviewed studies. We use this newly-defined methodology to critically discuss existing works, revealing topics within embodiment research for social interaction, assistive robotics, and service robotics, in which more extensive exploration would greatly improve the current understanding of the impact of embodiment on human perception and evaluation of human-robot interactions.The introduced taxonomy for embodiment design is used as a starting point for outlining our characterization of the design space of robot embodiments. The presented arXiv:1912.00312v1 [cs.RO] 1 Dec 2019 characterization can be used to discuss how the physical embodiment of socially interactive robots relates to social capabilities and affordances. By introducing a general model of the design space, existing research findings can better advise robot designers and we discuss how these findings can inform researchers through design decisions in the development of future socially interactive robots.

Using Socially Expressive Mixed Reality Arms for Enhancing Low-Expressivity Robots

“…The binned subjective results suggest a "better" teammate for a physically associated mixed reality robot. This is consistent with the evidence for the importance of embodiment for social presence [13]. Although having arms strongly correlated with the perception of a physical teammate, there could Fig.…”

“…AR-HRI has already had advances in the functional expression of a robot [11], [12] but has not yet explored social expressiveness. Introducing such expressiveness into AR-HRI allows us to leverage the positive aspects of physical robots-embodiment and physical affordances [13]-as well as the positive aspects of mixed reality-overcoming cost, safety, and physical constraints. This works aims to synergize the combined benefits of the two fields by creating mixed reality, socially expressive arms for low social expressivity robots ( Fig.…”

Long-Term Personalization of an In-Home Socially Assistive Robot for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…Socially assistive robotics (SAR) combines robotics and computational methods to broaden access to personalized, socially situated, and physically co-present interventions (Feil-Seifer and Matarić, 2011 ). A large body of work has supported the importance of physical embodiment (Deng et al, 2019 ), including its role in increasing compliance (Bainbridge et al, 2008 ), social engagement (Lee et al, 2006 ; Wainer et al, 2006 ), and cognitive learning gains (Leyzberg et al, 2012 ). Correspondingly, there has been a significant body of work using various types of robots for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in short-term studies (Diehl et al, 2012 ; Scassellati et al, 2012 ; Begum et al, 2016 ), and one long-term study (Scassellati et al, 2018 ).…”

Children’s Evaluations of a Therapy Dog and Biomimetic Robot: Influences of Animistic Beliefs and Social Interaction

“…This may be because positive social touch was soothing to the participant or positive social touch had tangible feedback effects on both TD and TR. Physical contact has been indicated as a significant factor in human users' ratings of the quality of interaction with robots [60] and for the most part, people are comfortable sharing their physical space with robots and will often approach them at a closer physical distance than living beings [61]. Positive social touch may have also have functioned as a "fallback" option when the participants did not know how interact with the TR.…”