Semiotics and Human-Robot Interaction
João Silva Sequeira, M. Isabel Ribeiro · Human-Robot Interaction · 2007
Creating artificial creatures capable of interacting with human beings, following standard social conventions and breaking them as humans do, is part of the technological expression of mankind.Around the 17th century renowned craftsman started producing mechanical automata with behavioral capabilities that imitated basic human skills, mainly related to locomotion and manipulation.A multitude of fictional robots were developed by science fiction authors since the early 20th century, most of them exhibiting behavioral capabilities far ahead of what science and technology would allow.Since then robots populate collective imagination and technological societies established as unconscious goal developing robots aiming at obtaining a human alter ego.In addition to strict intelligence, a key feature of human beings, robotics also targets human like physical interaction properties such as locomotion.After a century of scientific research it seems clear that achieving intelligence in robotics requires mastering cognition, learning, reasoning, and physical interaction techniques.The Turing test to assess the intelligence of a generic machine can also be used to assess the intelligence of a robot.If human can be deceived by a robot, in a dialogue and also in a physical interaction with the environment, through locomotion or manipulation, then it passes the test.As a complementary argument, the way the interaction is performed might influence whether or not the robot qualifies as intelligent.For example, a robot can avoid obstacles in different manners, according to the environment conditions, and induce different perceptions in a human watching the motion.In the end, an intelligent robot must interact with an ordinary human being, probably not experienced in what concerns robotics, as if it were a human.The robotics research community only recently started to pay attention to human robot interaction (HRI) as an independent research area.Besides the pure research interest, mass applications, both socially and economically relevant, are being envisaged for robots, namely as home companions, personnal assistants, security agents, office assistants, and generic workers.State of the art humanoid robotics is already capable of simple tasks in factory environments but the interaction abilities are still not up to pass a Turing test.Generic HRI must assume that humans are inexperienced in what concerns robot motion and hence the interaction techniques robots should use must clone those used by humans among themselves.This suggests that models of human interactions be used to support the research and development of HRI models.In addition, these models might support human like schemes for interaction among robots themselves hence avoiding having to consider separate competences for each type of interaction.