Movies and news reports represent for many the first source of interaction with social robots. Congruently, as tools for the dissemination of popular representations of robots, movies can have a direct impact on public perception, acceptance, and discourse about this type of technology. In this article, a content analysis of popular movies and franchises involving (fictional) social robots was conducted (k = 34). With this analysis, we sought to understand a) the main tropes used in movies involving robotic characters, b) the type of human-robot relationships depicted in those movies, and c) how the fictional robots compared with real robots in terms of their abilities. The results suggest that robots tend to be typically depicted in a polarized way that either emphasizes their extreme social abilities or their violent and destructive motives, with the former being slightly more prevalent. As a result, the relations between humans and robots tend to be either friendship or antagonism. Fictional robots are often portrayed as having advanced technical abilities that allow them to navigate multiple complex social settings and engage in different occupations typically performed by humans, in contrast with the abilities held by the most popular commercially available robots we have today.Highlights Movies and news reports represent for many the first source of interaction with social robots.Social robots tend to be portrayed in a very polarized way.Recommendations for future research and robot development are discussed.

Design teams of social robots are often multidisciplinary, due to the broad knowledge from different scientific domains needed to develop such complex technology. However, tools to facilitate multidisciplinary collaboration are scarce. We introduce a framework for the participatory design of social robots and corresponding canvas tool for participatory design. The canvases can be applied in different parts of the design process to facilitate collaboration between experts of different fields, as well as to incorporate prospective users of the robot into the design process. We investigate the usability of the proposed canvases with two social robot design case studies: a robot that played games online with teenage users and a librarian robot that guided users at a public library. We observe through participants’ feedback that the canvases have the advantages of (1) providing structure, clarity, and a clear process to the design; (2) encouraging designers and users to share their viewpoints to progress toward a shared one; and (3) providing an educational and enjoyable design experience for the teams.

Our goal is to disseminate an exploratory investigation that examined how physical presence and collaboration can be important factors in the development of assistive robots that can go beyond information-giving technologies. In particular, this video exhibits the setting and procedures of a user study that explored different types of collaborative interactions between robots and blind people.

In this paper we sought to understand how the display of different levels of warmth and competence, as well as, different roles (opponent versus partner) portrayed by a robot, affect the display of emotional responses towards robots and how they can be used to predict future intention to work. For this purpose we devised an entertainment card-game group scenario involving two humans and two robots (n=54). The results suggest that different levels of warmth and competence are associated with distinct emotional responses from users and that these variables are useful in predicting future intention to work, thus hinting at the importance of considering warmth and competence stereotypes in Human-Robot Interaction.

Blind people rely on sighted peers and different assistive technologies to accomplish everyday tasks. In this paper, we explore how assistive robots can go beyond information-giving assistive technologies (e.g., screen readers) by physically collaborating with blind people. We first conducted a set of focus groups to assess how blind people perceive and envision robots. Results showed that, albeit having stereotypical concerns, participants conceive the integration of assistive robots in a broad range of everyday life scenarios and are welcoming of this type of technology. In a second study, we asked blind participants to collaborate with two versions of a robot in a Tangram assembly task: one robot would only provide static verbal instructions whereas the other would physically collaborate with participants and adjust the feedback to their performance. Results showed that active collaboration had a major influence on the successful performance of the task. Participants also reported higher perceived warmth, competence and usefulness when interacting with the physically assistive robot. Overall, we provide preliminary results on the usefulness of assistive robots and the possible role these can hold in fostering a higher degree of autonomy for blind people.

This study investigated non-verbal behavior and socioemotional interactions in small-groups of humans and robots. Sixty-participants were involved in a group setting in which they were required to play a card game with another human and two robots (playing as partners or as opponents). The two robots displayed different goal orientations: a competitive robot (named Emys-) and a relationship-driven cooperative robot (named Glin+). Video recordings of the interactions were analyzed in three game play sessions. Eye gaze and socioemotional support behaviors were coded based on Bales» Interaction Process Analysis. Results indicated that gaze behavior towards partners was more frequently displayed to the relationship-driven robot than to the competitive robot and the human partners. In contrast, gaze towards opponents occurred more often towards the competitive robot than to the relationship-driven robot and the human opponents. Socioemotional support occurred more frequently towards partners than opponents, and was also displayed more often towards humans than towards robots. Moreover, in the sessions where the robots were opponents, participants provided more support to the competitive robot. This investigation in small groups of humans and robots provided evidence of different interaction patterns towards robots displaying distinct orientation goals, which can be useful in guiding the successful design of social robots.