Early Experiments using Motivations to Regulate Human-Robot Interaction

Abstract

We present the results of some early experiments with an autonomous robot to demonstrate its ability to regulate the intensity of social interaction with a human. The mode of social interaction is that of a caretaker-infant pair where a human acts as the caretaker for the robot. With respect to this type of socially situated learning, the ability to regulate the intensity of the interaction is important for promoting and maintaing a suitable learning environment where the learner (infant or robot) is neither overwhelmed nor under stimulated. The implementation and early demonstrations of this skill by our robot is the topic of this paper. Introduction We want to build robots that can engage in meaningful social exchanges with humans. In contrast to current work in robotics that focus on robot-robot interactions (Billard & Dautenhahn 1997), (Mataric 1995), this work concentrates on human-robot interactions. By doing so, it is possible to have a socially sophisticated human assist the r...