What do home robots want? The ambivalent power of cuteness in robotic relationships

Abstract

A wave of social, domestic robots is poised to enter our homes. Robots such as Jibo, Kuri and Olly are networked with other ‘smart’ devices and use cameras and voice control to provide companionship, care and household management. These robots are proposed as members of the family, and as such must encourage intimacy and trust with their human caregivers. In this article, we explore the nexus between the cute aesthetic of home robots and the kinds of affective relationships this aesthetic enables with the human user. Our argument is that the cuteness of home robots creates a highly ambivalent relationship of power between (human) subject and (robotic/digital) object, whereby the manifestation of consciousness and the production of lasting emotional bonds require home robots to exceed the affective and semiotic limitations, even as their cute appearance may encourage the production of intimacy. By exceeding the borders established by their own design, home robots are able to manifest as conscious beings, a manifestation which both destabilizes the power differential between user and robot and, paradoxically, points to the possibility of their own replacement. To explore these ideas, we discuss three soon-to-be-released social robots: Mayfield Robotics’ Kuri, Emotech’s Olly and Jibo Inc.’s Jibo. Each promises a unique personality that will integrate them as a member of the family.

Avatar Design of Virtual Salespeople: Mitigation of Recommendation Conflicts

“…Such results echo those on growing technologies including the Internet of Things and home robots. Caudwell and Lacey (2019) find that the cute appearance of home robots creates mixed feelings of intimacy and attraction, which casts doubt on their durability and functionality. Additional research is needed to assess the critical role played by various chatbots' or avatars' appearance and visual features.…”

Art, Design and Communication Theory in Creating the Communicative Social Robot ‘Haru’

“…The sociopsychological tradition of communication theory regards communication as a form of information transfer, where the aim of the sender of a message is to persuade the receiver of something ( Craig, 1999 ). In terms of robot design, this can be linked with the development of robots that can express emotions and are therefore likely to draw people into interactions often by being “cute” as seen with Kismet ( Turkle et al, 2004 ) and Jibo ( Caudwell and Lacey, 2019 ). Along similar lines, it is easy to see how Haru could also convey a cute personality.…”

“…The use of a cute aesthetic has been shown to work well to attract people’s attention toward interacting with a robot in the short term ( Breazeal, 2002 ), but questions have been raised over how well this might work in the long term ( Menzel and D’Aluiso, 2000 ; Caudwell and Lacey, 2019 ), the goal of the Haru project. In addition, although Haru has been categorized in some reports as designed for entertainment, where a cute personality might be particularly engaging and non-threatening ( Zachiotis et al, 2018 ), this would likely not be appropriate when Haru is positioned to complete practical or business oriented communicative tasks.…”

“…Framing the initial moment of meeting as an encounter with otherness draws out the importance of difference as a means not only of attracting attention, but also retaining attention over the mid to long term. As Caudwell and Lacey suggest ( 2019 , 10), it may well be important for social robots to “maintain a sense of alterity or otherness, creating the impression that there is more going on than what the user may know”, because “this sense of alterity (real or simulated)” is one way to break down “the strict power differential that is initially established by their cute aesthetic”. In this way, a social robot can become more than a compliant communicator always focused on responding to human queries and questions; instead, such a robot can be recognized as having the potential to act on its own, provide information or call for human attention and response as it requires.…”

Browsing with Alexa: Interrogating the impact of voice assistants as web interfaces

“…social vs task oriented) informs the effectiveness of the retrieval of resources and functions from the Web (Chattaraman et al, 2019). Consequently, designers have proposed practical solutions to instil distinctive personality into software and hardware objects as a way to stimulate particular forms of engagements in users (Marenko and Van Allen, 2016) and have pointed to the impact of anthropomorphic features in orienting users' perception and affect (Araujo, 2018;Caudwell and Lacey, 2019).…”