At Stanford's Robot Block Party, Willow Garage's PR2 showed up and was dishing out high fives. It was unclear, however, that his gestures invited a good slapping of hands. Being one of the first people to approach the robot, Joe Shea of Oakland, CA stared at PR2 blankly as it raised its grippers for a double high-five until PR2's overlords clued him in with, "he wants a high five."
Willow Garage continues its research in human-robot interaction led largely by social scientist Leila Takayama, and more recently Doug Dooley. Dooley, a Pixar animator is impassioned by the task of designing things to come to life. Nemo and Wall-e just weren't alive enough, however. Now this duo is working on making the next generation of PR2 seem more alive, making it more approachable, and yes, polite.
Listen to an interview with the two designers on American Public Media's The Story.
Doug's ideas include animating the robot's eyes to show interest by having it look at a person as it is being approached, and for its gaze to simply move around when being spoken to, bring its expression to life. He is also working on having the robot raise up and down slightly to show approval or dismay. The Willow Garage team is now considering hips for their next generation of PR2 because a robot's ability to lean into a conversation could really alter a human's approach to the interaction.
These micro expressions will be central to amicable human-robot interaction. Takayama says that "if you can make them more appealing, more approachable, and more readable then I think people will give them a chance... and may discover their utility then." Until robots are more autonomous they really need humans, and if robots can be animated to seem polite, interested and even concerned, people will care about them more. Research has begun to establish that humans do indeed respond emotionally to robots and "if you can get people to care about these machines then they'll do things that will get them to be more functional and more useful" Takayama says.
Though the role personal robots will play in our lives remains unclear, Takayama and Dooley are on the right track to making the transition as smooth as possible for society. MIT's Nexi is a great example of how appealing a social robot will be.
