Robots and Avatars as Hosts, Advisors, Companions, and Jesters

Abstract

In the 1970s, some AI leaders predicted that we would soon see all manner of artificially intelligent entities in our daily lives. Unfortunately, in the interim, this has been true mostly in the realm of science fiction. Recently, however, pioneering researchers have been bringing together advances in many subfields of AI, such as robotics, computer vision, natural language and speech processing, and cognitive modeling, to create the first generation of robots and avatars that illustrate the true potential of combining these technologies. The purpose of this article is to highlight a few of these projects and to draw some conclusions from them for future research.We begin with a short discussion of scope and terminology. Our focus here is on how robots and avatars interact with humans, rather than with the environment. Obviously, this cannot be a sharp distinction, since humans form part of the environment for such entities. However, we are interested primarily in how new interaction capabilities enable robots and avatars to enter into new kinds of relationships with humans, such as hosts, advisors, companions, and jesters.We will not try to define robot here, but we do want to point out that our focus is on humanoid robots (although we stretch the category a bit to include a few animallike robots that illustrate the types of interaction we are interested in). Industrial automation robotics, while economically very important, and a continual source of advances in sensor and effector technology for humanoid robots, will continue to be more of a behind-the-scenes contributor to our everyday lives.The meaning of the term avatar is currently in flux. Its original and narrowest use is to refer to the graphical representation of a person (user) in a virtual reality system. Recently, however, the required con-

A Battle of Wit: Applying Computational Humour to Game Design

“…While some players are helpful, others are prone to taking advantage of newbies, mocking and tricking them. A number of helper agents have been developed like Sergeant Blackwell, a witty avatar that answer questions in a virtual military application [21] or, one that provides feedback on players' chess moves [22]. Thus, a humorous game companion could provide assistance to novice players through the private channel, offering in-game information, as well as enhancing players' moods through Oneliners; thus, motivating players to advance in the game by being playful rather than didactic.…”

Attentional Mechanisms for Socially Interactive Robots–A Survey

“…When considering the action-perception loop, research efforts in robotics have usually been focussed in determining the influence that predicting future perceptions has on the current choice of action: this, in fact, relates to the classical problem of modelling closed-loop control. Contrastingly, closing the loop 5 The dorsal pathway, and also the phylogenetically preceding superior colliculus (shared by all vertebrates, from mammals to more primitive creatures such as reptiles, conserved through evolution due to its fundamental role in survival [116]), both mediate attention and the perceptual control of action. For more information regarding these brain sites and for a summary on their specific roles in visual attention, please refer to [117] and [24,26], respectively.…”

“…On the other hand, emotion recognition (analysis) [138], and, to a lesser extent, emotion emulation (synthesis) [5] have been a subject of a great deal of recent research. In the context of joint attention, a considerable amount of work includes emotion recognition to infer acknowledgement and validation of correct RJA from the expressions and demeanour of the other, while emotion emulation has also been used to build expressive robots that convey analogous emotional content to their interlocutor.…”

“…Consequently, service robots have become a major part of assisted living technology [3,4], even in its broader sense of giving assistance to promote the welfare of any human being, and not just elderly or people with physical disabilities. On the other hand, service robots have also been finding space in entertainment [5], and in assisting or replacing humans in tedious or difficult tasks [6], namely in industrial applications [7]. The fuzzy distinction between this type of robots and all others implies that service robots can range from devices with very limited cognitive skills, such as iRobot's Roomba TM [8], to the socalled "socially interactive robots" [9].…”

Cooperative gazing behaviors in human multi-robot interaction

“…With the advance of robotics technology and prevalence of robots all around the world (Tapus et al 2007;Goodrich & Schultz 2007;Rich & Sidner 2009), investigating and further improving collaborative behaviors among multiple robot agents has drawn keen interest among researchers. Such collaborations not only take places between teams of robots (Parker 1998;Dudek et al 2002;Balch 2002;Farinelli et al 2004), but more often between humans and robots (Duffy 2003;Dautenhahn 2007;Cakmak et al 2011).…”