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 chopped and solidified as more information is acquired.

Directions to take based on the existing scenarios. [TODO]

Heriot Watt Spirit of the building:

1. Team buddy, a mobile robot/collective memory for a team working in a lab
2. Personal guide - for navigating around a university campus, remembering appointments, telling you where to go
3. In the wild - a gossip/chat robot - appears on a large screen in a social area

INESC-ID

1. Game companion for young children
2. Personal trainer - which can migrate to mobile robot for jogging exercises
3. Welcome to the jungle - talk to game characters through a robot which can alternate between real and game world

The University of Hertfordshire

1. Fetch and carry, to help with physical impairment or provide convenience
2. Cognitive prosthetic - memory aid for tasks
3. Telepresence card player - a robot mediates play between two people
4. Teaching proxemic preferences - a robot learns where to be relative to the user in different situations
5. Travelling companion - agent migration, to stay with user during home, work, shopping

These are some vague directions to head in, I need to consider how far down each path we could get for this deliverable.

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
• The feeling that something is dependant on you
• More effective/complex strategies can be learnt over time - “give him to me, I know how to calm him down”

Further:

• "Inhumane" treatment of robots in the army