Sociable Robots

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Sociable Robots Peeping into the Human World
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An Infants Advantages

• Non-hostile environment
• Actively benevolent, empathic caregiver
• Co-exists with mature version of self

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Baby Scheme

• Physical form can evoke nurturing response
• Caregiver exaggerates voice, gestures

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Kismet a Baby Robot
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Requirements

• Robot needs to perceive human state
• Computer vision, speech processing
• Human needs to perceive robot state
• Animatronics, speech generation
• Closed loop interaction requires both directions

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Readable locus of attention
Attention can be deduced from behavior Or can be
expressed more directly
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Expressing locus of attention
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Computing locus of attention
Cyclopean camera
Stereo pair
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Computing locus of attention
Visual input
Pre-attentive filters
Saliency map
Pursuit
(Cyclopean camera)
Primary information flow
Modulatory influence
Eye movement
Behavior system
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Looking Preference
Seek face high skin gain, low color saliency
gain Looking time 80 face, 20 block
Seek toy low skin gain, high saturated-color
gain Looking time 28 face, 72 block

• Internal influences bias how salience is measured
• The robot is not a slave to its environment
• Prefers behaviorally relevant stimuli

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Example (video)
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Example (video)

• Robots search is task-specific
• Still opportunistic when appropriate
• Visual behavior conveys degree of commitment
• Gaze direction, expression conveys interest

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Interpersonal Distance
Comfortable interaction distance
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Interpersonal Distance
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Interpersonal Distance
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Interpersonal Distance
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Interpersonal Distance
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Examples (video)
Come hither, friend
Back off buster!

• Robot backs away if person comes too close
• Cues person to back away too social
  amplification
• Robot makes itself salient to call a person
  closer if too far away

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Negotiating object showing
Comfortable interaction speed
Too fast irritation response
Too fast, Too close threat response
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Example (video)
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Facial expressions
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Facial Expressions(Russell, ScottSmith)
arousal
surprise
afraid
elated
angry
stress
excitement
happy
frustrated
displeasure
pleasure
neutral
sad
content
depression
calm
fatigued

• Emotions can be mapped to affect dimensions
  (Russell)
• Facial postures are related in a systematic way
  to these affective dimensions (Smith Scott)

relaxed
bored
sleepy
sleep
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Generating Posture, Expressions
Open stance
Low arousal
Negative valence
Positive valence
High arousal
Closed stance
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Example Facial Expression
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With Posture (video)
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Emotive Voice Quality
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Synthesized Emotive Speech
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With Vocalizations (video)
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But
Is there more to life than being really, really,
really, ridiculously good-looking?
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Affective Intent (video)
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Fernalds Results

• Four cross-cultural contours of infant-directed
  speech
• Exaggerated prosody matched to infants innate
  responses

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Evidence for Fernald-like Contours
Approval
Prohibition
Attention
Soothing
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Performing Recognition
prohibition high-energy neutral
attention approval
energy variance
soothing low-energy neutral
pitch mean
Breazeal Aryananda, Humanoids 2000
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Examples (video)
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Turn-Taking

• Cornerstone of human-style communication,
  learning, and instruction
• Four phases of turn cycle
• relinquish floor
• listen to speaker
• reacquire floor
• speak
• Integrates
• visual behavior attention
• facial expression animation
• body posture
• vocalization lip synchronization

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Example (video)
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Conclusions

• Robots can partake in infant-caregiver
  interactions
• These interactions are rich with scaffolding acts
• Prerequisite for socially situated learning

Kismets really, really, ridiculously detailed
web-pages http//www.ai.mit.edu/projects/kismet/