The Rise of the Roboid

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze a new phenomenon that is emerging in the field of social robotics, which we name as “roboid”. The roboid is a robot that is still at the prototype stage but claims to be fully functioning. We argue that the roboid has been created to handle a new phase between the prototyping and the commercialization of robots. In this intermediate phase, a wide-spread promotional campaign is organized by robot producers, with the purpose of understanding the desires, needs, and suggestions of potential customers. We present the first case of a a highly human-like roboid named Sophia. We carried out the visual analysis of the content and the content-agnostic factors of a selection of 15 videos uploaded on YouTube on the social robot Sophia and a qualitative analysis of the textual component of these videos to investigate a selected part of the promotional campaign on Sophia. Furthermore, on the 23,810 comments that users have posted on these videos, we applied quantitative analysis to explore the observers’ opinions about Sophia. Results highlight that: (1) a powerful but potentially ridiculous narrative has been used to build the rhetoric of Sophia; (2) the comments on the videos are too poor to enable a co-construction of this social robot with the audiences (implicit intention of Hanson Robotics); (3) the introduction of the roboid might be a very good solution to reduce the uncertainties that may occur when a new robot moves directly from the laboratory to the market.

A Survey on Recent Advances in Social Robotics

“…This is not only due to the incomplete maturity of technologies that robots require to operate with humans, with enough performances to be trusted and believed, but also to the incomplete comprehension of how humans may be willing to accept robots and in which contexts. In this context, it was argued in [210] that there is a phenomenon becoming common in the social robotics field, named the roboid: a robot that is still at the prototype stage but claims to be fully functioning.…”

Constructing and Marketing Sexual Fantasy: Analyzing the Social Media of Sex Robots

“…Humanoid robots and their representations provide a unique frame onto which we can analyze future perceptions of human-machine relations and how the technology (and its design) reflects current power structures (Fortunati et al, 2021;Leach & Dehnert, 2021). Sex robots elucidate an additional layer of complexities, given their intimate and companionship nature (Dehnert, 2022).…”

How the social robot Sophia is mediated by a YouTube video

“…Parviainen and Coeckelbergh, 2021), and on the other, the Hanson Robotics’ “cow earning” (Riccio, 2021) with her media and public event appearances and commercials. She has been the protagonist of TV and radio programs, journalist information, and different public debates and initiatives as well as political events, becoming a communication phenomenon, defined by Dolbeau-Bandin and Wilhelm (2021) “ventriloquist artificial sentience.” Sophia has many capabilities: she keeps her head slightly tilted and is able to display 62 facial expressions and even wink her eye, which is a sophisticated form of expression typical of human beings 1 (Fortunati et al, 2021a). She can greet and shake hands with her human partners, see via the cameras within her eyes in combination with computer algorithms, maintain eye contact, and recognize faces.…”

“…Her similarity to a woman is mitigated by the fact that a computer is visible in her head through a transparent dome and this should avoid the possible effects of uncanny valley (Mori, 1970). Sophia’s behavior is guided by an open-source software framework, which assesses the appropriate behavior in which she should engage, comprised of natural language dialogue, gestural interaction, emotions, and recognition of human face, body, and voice emotion (Fortunati et al, 2021a). 2 At the communication level, she can process speech by operating “in hybrid autonomous mode, moving between scripted and chatbot, and able to converse exclusively in chatbot mode” (Lim, 2018, rep. in Riccio, 2021: 48) and engaging in credible conversations as well as being able to learn and develop through experience.…”