M14 First Skeleton Companions : April 2009

D9.2. First skeleton companions M14 Result of completion of T9.1.2 Report, live experiment

Very sketchy ideas at this point, pending more information and getting hands dirty with ION. Will be pruned and solidified as more information is acquired.

What:

• Multiple interacting agents
• Long term memory and personality based on fictional characters
• Short term memory based on beginning of play
• Audience participation

Why:

• Audience familiar with characters
• Could form a good benchmark for social interaction
• How do they resolve interesting social situations
• Start in the middle of a familiar story?
• What happens after the story ends?

Further:

• Heron's Nauplius
• Robot Macbeth
• Robot Soap Operas

What:

• Look into alternative methods of communicating affective state to the user
• Non-vocal sounds
• Non-literal visuals

Why:

• Uncanny valley
• Remove the problem of simulating human expressions
• The challenge of meeting the robot halfway in mutual understanding might be more engaging
• Task of deciphering results in more implied/imagined content
• People work together to try and understand

Further:

• Dust bunnies
• Robot Semaphore

What:

• Interface to allow the user to easily build and configure robots
• At the software level
• Reconfigurable layer 2 ↔ layer 3
• Need some common goal, or competition

Why:

• Suspicion that the attachment gained by having a role in the design of a robot is greater than a finely tuned system (or even a system which works)
• Present the internals of the system to the user in some clear manner
• Long term attachment through tweakability

Further:

• CRobots

What:

• Physical dependency
  • Needs feeding
  • Needs transport - has wheels, but asks to be carried everywhere
  • Needs light - not solar powered, but doesn't like the dark
  • Gets cold - needs physical contact
• Emotional
  • Paranoia - requires constant reassuring noises
  • Anger - needs calming, physical contact
  • Sadness - needs singing to
• All of the above?!
• It may be important that they are entirely unnecessary needs

Why:

• Sounds really irritating, but - Tamagotchi
• Long term attachment through manipulation of the caring instinct and guilt
• Attachment due to the feeling that something is dependant on you, rather than a machine that just needs occasional recharging
• More effective/complex strategies that can be learnt over time - “give him to me, I know how to calm him down”

Further: