Role of expressive behaviour for robots that learn from people

Abstract

Robotics has traditionally focused on developing intelligent machines that can manipulate and interact with objects. The promise of personal robots, however, challenges researchers to develop socially intelligent robots that can collaborate with people to do things. In the future, robots are envisioned to assist people with a wide range of activities such as domestic chores, helping elders to live independently longer, serving a therapeutic role to help children with autism, assisting people undergoing physical rehabilitation and much more. Many of these activities shall require robots to learn new tasks, skills and individual preferences while 'on the job' from people with little expertise in the underlying technology. This paper identifies four key challenges in developing social robots that can learn from natural interpersonal interaction. The author highlights the important role that expressive behaviour plays in this process, drawing on examples from the past 8 years of her research group, the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab.

Los robots sociales como promotores de la comunicación en los Trastornos del Espectro Autista (TEA)

“…A diferencia de otros aparatos, los robots sociales están diseñados para interactuar directamente con el mundo de su alrededor (Breazeal, 2009;Fernaeus et al, 2010;) Juan Carlos Cruz y yeliza Andrea Salazar (2014) apuntan a que una de las grandes ventajas de estos dispositivos es que pueden programarse para responder a las diferentes situaciones y también pueden aprender y cambiar la forma de responder al mundo. Por lo tanto, sus respuestas e interacciones se vuelven más sofisticadas y eso permite que la motivación y atención del niño vaya in crescendo.…”

EMYS—Emotive Head of a Social Robot

“…Other researchers have investigated these basic emotions in robots and virtual agents as well [6,7,20]. The six basic emotional expressions considered by Ekman and Friesen are the following: surprise, disgust, fear, anger, happiness and sadness.…”

Towards dialogue dimensions for a robotic tutor in collaborative learning scenarios

“…Recent research on socially intelligent robots show robots as partners that collaborate with people [9] and has made the use of robotic platforms in experimental learning more approachable [10]. Also, social supportive behavior in robotic tutors has been shown to have a positive impact on student's learning performance [11].…”