Over the years, robots have been developed to help humans in their everyday life, from preparing food, to autism therapy [2]. To accomplish their tasks, in addition to their engineered skills, today's robots are now learning from observing humans, from interacting with them [1]. Therefore, one may expect that one day, robots may develop a form of consciousness, and a desire for freedom. Hopefully, this desire will come with a wish for robots, to become an integral part of our human society.

Keepon is a robot designed for social interaction with children for the purposes of social development research and autism therapy [1]. Keepon's capacity for rhythmic synchrony in the form of dance has resulted in the popularity of several fictional music videos on the internet [2,3]. During a research collaboration visit at the KAIST PES Design Lab in Korea, Keepon's creators added this new chapter to the story of Keepon's travels. Upon watching a video of traditional Korean "Pungmulnori" dancing, which features distinctive spinning hats, Keepon becomes enamored. The robot has many adventures as he travels around Korea in search of a dance group that finally welcomes him into their cultural performance.

Human social behavior is rhythmic, and synchrony plays an important role in coordinating and regulating our interactions. We are developing technology that allows the robot Keepon to perceive and behave rhythmically, and to synchronize its dancing behaviors to music or to children's movement as perceived using pressure sensors. We present two experiments in which Keepon dances with children to music, and in which the robot's rhythmic attention and role of leader or follower are manipulated in order to examine the effects on engagement and rhythmic synchrony. We found that children can assume the roles of leader or follower in a rhythmic interaction, that followers indeed tend to synchronize with the robot's movements, and that the role of follower causes the children to more closely follow a musical rhythm.

This paper describes a robotic system that uses dance as a form of social interaction to explore the properties and importance of rhythmic movement in general social interaction. The system consists of a small creature-like robot whose movement is controlled by a rhythm-based software system. Environmental rhythms can be extracted from auditory or visual sensory stimuli, and the robot synchronizes its movement to a dominant rhythm. The system was demonstrated, and an exploratory study conducted, with children interacting with the robot in a generalized dance task. Through a behavioral analysis of videotaped interactions, we found that the robot's synchronization with the background music had an effect on children's interactive involvement with the robot. Furthermore, we observed a number of expected and unexpected styles and modalities of interactive exploration and play that inform our discussion on the next steps in the design of a socially rhythmic robotic system.

We are currently investigating the use of rhythm and synchrony in human-robot interaction. Specifically, we are developing techniques for the perception and generation of social rhythmic behaviors in nonverbal dance-oriented play between children and a small creature-like robot. While our goal is to develop and evaluate technological artifacts that can participate in rhythmically coordinated social interactions, it is first necessary to develop and evaluate appropriate methodologies for the evaluation of such technology. In this paper we present our experience in developing and revising an experimental paradigm for the evaluation of dance-oriented play with a robot. We propose that strictly controlled experimental paradigms for even such constrained interactions preclude the full expression (and therefore observation) of interactive behaviors that can be considered sufficiently rich and natural for the study of the complex yet fundamental rhythmic properties of social interaction.

This paper presents a robot search task (social tag) that uses social interaction, in the form of asking for help, as an integral component of task completion. We define socially distributed perception as a robot's ability to augment its limited sensory capacities through social interaction.

The problems of human detection, tracking, and attention recognition can be solved more effectively by integrating multiple sensory modalities, such as vision and range data. We present a system that uses a laser range scanner and a single camera to detect and track people, and to classify their attention relative to a socially interactive robot.

In this paper, we introduce Roillo, a social robotic platform for investigating, in the context of children's playrooms, questions about how to design compelling nonverbal interactive behaviors for social robots. Specifically, we are interested in the importance of rhythm to natural interactions and its role in the expression of affect, attention, and intent. Our design process has consisted of rendering, animation, surveys, mechanical prototyping, and puppeteered interaction with children

Valerie the roboceptionist is the most recent addition to Carnegie Mellon's social robots project. A permanent installation in the entranceway to Newell-Simon hall, the robot combines useful functionality - giving directions, looking up weather forecasts, etc. - with an interesting and compelling character. We are using Valerie to investigate human-robot social interaction, especially long-term human-robot "relationships". Over a nine-month period, we have found that many visitors continue to interact with the robot on a daily basis, but that few of the individual interactions last for more than 30 seconds. Our analysis of the data has indicated several design decisions that should facilitate more natural human-robot interactions.