Jane Vincent · Sakari Taipale

Bartolomeo Sapio · Giuseppe Lugano
Leopoldina Fortunati Editors

Social
Robots from
a Human
Perspective
Social Robots from a Human Perspective
Jane Vincent · Sakari Taipale · Bartolomeo Sapio
Giuseppe Lugano · Leopoldina Fortunati
Editors

Social Robots from a Human

Perspective

13
Editors
Jane Vincent Giuseppe Lugano
School of Arts COST
University of Surrey Brussels
Guildford, Surrey Belgium
UK
Leopoldina Fortunati
Sakari Taipale University of Udine
University of Jyväskylä Udine
Jyväskylä Italy
Finland

Bartolomeo Sapio
Fondazione Ugo Bordoni
Rome
Italy

ISBN 978-3-319-15671-2 ISBN 978-3-319-15672-9  (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015935413

Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London

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Acknowledgments

Although the robotification of societies is still at an early phase in Europe and

worldwide, robots do not leave people cold. They provoke strong thoughts, both
for and against. This volume addresses robotics from a human perspective, high-
lighting the social, cultural, and political aspects of robotics. In so doing, the
book attempts to present social robots in proportion by illustrating people’s own
attitudes and perceptions, as well as ways of how social robots gain a foothold
in societies through the increased automatization and digitalization which seem to
be leading to the introduction of more and more self-sufficient robots. One mes-
sage of the book is that social robots do not turn up out of the blue, but many
of their social functions are familiar to all of us from the world of digital media.
For example, the user interfaces of social robots are designed to be intuitive and
user-friendly by utilizing existing mundane technologies, such as tablets, mobile
phones, touch screens, and web cameras, as well as all kinds of sensors already
embedded in mobile communication devices. This edited volume is born out of
the international workshop “The Future Concept and Reality of Social Robotics:
Challenges, Perception and Applications. Role of Social Robotics in Current
and Future Society” organized by COST (European Cooperation in Science and
Technology) in Brussels during 10–13 June 2103. The original idea behind this
book was to bring together the most robust empirical research work and the most
illustrative of non-empirical social analyses of social robots presented in the work-
shop. The ten papers included in this volume were drawn from over 76 papers pre-
sented in Brussels. The outcome of this effort rests with the reader now.
Finally, we would like to thank COST for making the workshop possible.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the book
are those of the respective author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of
their background organization or COST. We are also grateful to Springer, espe-
cially to Senior Editor Anthony Doyle and Ms. Amudha Vijayarangan, for their

v
vi Acknowledgments

commitment and support to this project. Also, all our peer reviewers who assisted
in assuring the quality of the chapters, and Ms. Emilia Leinonen, who assisted in
the final preparation of the book manuscript, deserve thanks and appreciation.

Jane Vincent
Sakari Taipale
Bartolomeo Sapio
Giuseppe Lugano
Leopoldina Fortunati
Contents

1 Introduction: Situating the Human in Social Robots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Sakari Taipale, Jane Vincent, Bartolomeo Sapio, Giuseppe Lugano
and Leopoldina Fortunati

Part I  Perceptions and Attitudes to Social Robots

2 Robot Shift from Industrial Production to Social Reproduction. . . . . 11

Sakari Taipale, Federico de Luca, Mauro Sarrica
and Leopoldina Fortunati

3 In the Company of Robots: Views of Acceptability of Robots

in Social Settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
James E. Katz, Daniel Halpern and Elizabeth Thomas Crocker

4 Perception, Acceptance, and the Social Construction

of Robots—Exploratory Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Joachim R. Höflich and Afifa El Bayed

Part II  Human Interaction with Social Robots

5 Social Robotics in Health-Care Service: The Case

of Rehabilitation Programmes in Hong Kong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Pui-lam Law

6 Intuitive Interaction Between Humans and Robots in Work

Functions at Industrial Environments: The Role of Social Robotics. . . 67
Antonio B. Moniz

vii
viii Contents

7 Minimizing the Human? Functional Reductions of Complexity

in Social Robotics and Their Cybernetic Heritage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Timo Kaerlein

8 Open Sourcing Social Robotics: Humanoid Artifacts from

the Viewpoint of Designers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Davide Fornari and Serena Cangiano

Part III  Social Robots in Everyday Life

9 The Mobile Phone: An Emotionalised Social Robot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Jane Vincent

10 The Technologicalization of Education in China: A Case Study

of the Home–School Communication System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Chung-tai Cheng

11 Fashion Tech and Robotics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Elda Danese

12 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Jane Vincent, Sakari Taipale, Bartolomeo Sapio, Giuseppe Lugano
and Leopoldina Fortunati
Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Jane Vincent  Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow at the LSE Media and Communica-
tions Department and Visiting Fellow with the Digital World Research Centre at the
University of Surrey. She researches the social practices of mobile communications
and ICT users. Her studies for industry and international academic organizations on
the social shaping of technology, children’s and older peoples’ use of mobile phones
are published widely and Jane’s work on emotions and mobile phones is published
in English, German, and Russian.
Sakari Taipale  Ph.D., is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University
of Jyväskylä, Finland. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Eastern
Finland. Presently, he is running a five-year research project on intergenerational
relations in the digital societies. Taipale has published on the social aspects of new
media technologies and mobilities in many high-ranked academic journals, such as
British Journal of Sociology, New Media and Society, Information, Communication
and Society, Social Science Research, Telecommunications Policy, European Jour-
nal of Communication, and Mobilities. He has also edited a book with Prof. Juho
Saari and Dr. Sakari Kainulainen. Regarding robot research, Taipale has studied the
Eurobarometer 382 “Public Attitudes towards Robots” data collected in 2012 and
lectured on social robotics at international academic events.
Bartolomeo Sapio  Ph.D., holds a Doctor Laurea Degree in Electronic Engineer-
ing summa cum laude at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. He is a Senior
Researcher and Project Manager with Fondazione Ugo Bordon participating in
several international projects. He has carried out methodological research in the
field of scenario analysis, developing the original methods WISE, SEARCH and
GIMMICKS, and applying them to multimedia, broadband networks, the Internet,
mobile services, and the convergence between fixed and mobile networks. He de-
signed and implemented SIMULAB (Scenario-engineering Interactive Multimedia
LABoratory), an advanced work environment to carry out research activities in the

ix
x Editors and Contributors

field of Scenario Engineering. He was Chairman of COST (COoperation in the field

of Scientific and Technical research) Action 298 “Participation in the Broadband
Society”, and a member in the Management Committees of COST Action IS0605
“A Telecommunications Economics COST Network—Econ@Tel” and COST Ac-
tion A22 “Foresight methodologies—Exploring new ways to explore the future,”
where he chaired the Working Group “Integrating Narratives and Numbers”. He is
currently the co-ordinator of an EU-funded project carried out within the Seventh
Framework Programme: CUMULUS (Certification infrastrUcture for MUlti-Layer
cloUd Services).
Giuseppe Lugano  Ph.D., works in Brussels as Science Officer for COST, the long-
est-running European framework for cooperation in science and technology. He
holds an M.Sc. degree in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science. His
publications and research interests deal with the conceptual design of technologies
and services for community and sustainable living.
Leopoldina Fortunati  Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology of Communication at the
Faculty of Education of the University of Udine. She has conducted several research
projects in the field of gender studies, cultural processes, and communication and in-
formation technologies. She is the author and editor of many books, is associate edi-
tor of the journal The Information Society and serves as referee for many outstanding
journals. She is active at European level especially in COST networks and is the Ital-
ian representative in the COST Domain Committee (ISCH, Individuals, Societies,
Cultures and Health). She is the co-chair with Richard Ling of the International As-
sociation “The Society for the Social Study of Mobile Communication” (SSSMC).
Her works have been published in eleven languages: Bulgarian, Chinese, English,
French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Slovenian, and Spanish.

Contributors

Afifa El Bayed  M.A., is a Research Assistant and Lecturer of communication stud-

ies at the University of Erfurt. The fields of her teaching and research interest com-
prise mediated interpersonal communication, communication with media including
social robots, as well as social media and collaborative innovation and production
within their context.
Serena Cangiano  M.Sc., is a Ph.D., candidate at University IUAV of Venice and
SUPSI. She teaches and carries out projects of applied research at the Laboratory
of visual culture at SUPSI University of applied sciences and arts of southern Swit-
zerland, in the field of open design, interactive art, and user experience design. She
coordinates the Master of Advanced Studies in Interaction Design SUPSI and the
activities of the FabLab Lugano (www.fablab.supsi.ch). She is member of the Open
Design + Hardware group of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Her experience
spans from interaction design to user experience design, innovation and open design
studies, electronic prototyping, and digital fabrication.
Editors and Contributors xi

Chung-Tai Cheng  Ph.D., gained his doctorate in Sociology from the Peking Univer-
sity in China. He is currently Teaching Fellow in the Department of Applied Social
Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interest is in the topic
of the social and normative implications of Information Communication Technology
(ICT) use in contemporary China. His presentation ‘Imagined performativity: the great
virtue of cyberspace in contemporary Chinese workers’ social lives’ won the Best Pres-
entation Award in COST Action 298 Conference: the Good, the Bad, and the Challeng-
ing in the year 2009. He has published several journal articles and book chapters and
presented conference papers, mainly focusing on social and cultural impacts of ICTs.
Elizabeth Thomas Crocker  is a Ph.D., student in Anthropology and a graduate
research assistant in the Division of Emerging Media Studies at Boston University.
She is interested in examining how emerging media is redefining experiences of
religion, visual communication, togetherness, and being in the world. Recently, she
has also explored concepts of self with relation to possession and the other.
Elda Danese  Ph.D., teaches a graduate course of fashion design at the IUAV Uni-
versity in Venice, Italy. She is interested in contemporary visual cultures, in fashion,
and fabric production. Danese has both practical experiences in curation and pub-
lished scientific studies on contemporary textile and fashion.
Federico de Luca  Ph.D., works as Statistician at the International Energy Agency
(IEA/OECD), Paris. He has a Ph.D. in Social Statistics obtained from the Division
of Social Statistics and Demography at the University of Southampton. Previously,
he has worked as a research assistant for the universities of Chicago, Padua, Venice,
and Southampton. His research interests also include the ways to evaluate profes-
sionals’ knowledge and on how this might impact on policymakers’ decisions.
Davide Fornari  Ph.D., holds a doctoral degree in Design Sciences from University
IUAV of Venice and is a tenured Teacher Researcher at the Laboratory of visual
culture of SUPSI University of applied sciences and arts of Southern Switzerland, in
Lugano, where he teaches History of graphic design and coordinates the Master of
advanced studies in Interaction Design. He edited the Italian translation of Heinrich
Wölfflin’s Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture (Milan 2011) and the col-
lection of essays Estetiche del camouflage. In 2012 he authored the essay Il volto
come interfaccia (“Face as Interface”) with a grant from Swiss National Science
Foundation. He is a member of the permanent observatory of ADI (industrial design
association) and of the editorial board of the magazine “Progetto grafico”.
Daniel Halpern  is Assistant Professor in the School of Communications at Pon-
tificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (Catholic University of Chile) and head of
the think tank TrenDigital, where he studies, teaches, and does consulting work
on social media and strategic communication. His research focuses on methods
and approaches for understanding the social consequences of communication tech-
nologies. He has published several papers on the role of social media in shaping
interpersonal relationships, mediating social aspects such as civic participation, and
affecting processes in learning with technologies.
xii Editors and Contributors

Joachim R. Höflich  Ph.D., is a Professor and researcher of communication studies

at the University of Erfurt. The fields of his teaching and research expertise include
media use and effects, media change, media integration, mediated interpersonal
communication, mobile communication, and communication and relationships with
media such as social robots.
Timo Kaerlein is a Research Fellow at the Department of Media Studies at the
University of Paderborn. His research interests include media theory, digital culture,
personal/mobile media, and social robotics. In 2012 he visited the Intelligent Robot-
ics and Communication Laboratories at the Advanced Telecommunications Research
Institute International (ATR) in Kyoto, Japan as a Cooperative Researcher. In his
doctoral research he strives for an understanding of emergent relationships between
human body and technological artifacts ensuing with the proliferation of mobile net-
worked computers like smartphones. Recent thematically relevant publications: Kaer-
lein (2014) The Social Robot as Fetish? Conceptual Affordances and Risks of Neo-
Animistic Theory. International Journal of Social Robotics, Online First, 23 Dec 2014,
doi 10.1007/s12369-014-0275-6; Kaerlein T. (2012) Presence in a Pocket. Phantasms
of Immediacy in Japanese Mobile Telepresence Robotics. communication +1(1).
James E. Katz  Ph.D., is the Feld Professor of Emerging Media at Boston Univer-
sity’s College of Communication. In addition, he directs its Division of Emerging
Media Studies. The Division addresses the process of how new media technologies
are created and introduced to users, the effects they have on users, and how technol-
ogies and the content they produce are moulded, co-constructed, and re-constructed
by users. Dr. Katz joined BU from Rutgers University where he held the title of
Board of Governors Professor of Communication, the highest honor the University
can bestow on a member of its faculty. During his time at Rutgers, Katz served two
terms as chair of the Department of Communication and also directed the Center
for Mobile Communication Studies, which he founded in 2004. Earlier in his career,
Dr. Katz headed the social science research unit at Bell Communications Research,
which also honored him with the title of Distinguished Member of Staff. Dr. Katz
has devoted his career to analyzing the uses and social consequences of emerging
communication technologies, especially the Internet and telephone. He explores
how they affect social interaction and what their uses reveal about human nature
and organizations and was among the first to demonstrate their pro-social uses. He
also seeks to understand what the future holds in terms of society and communica-
tion technologies and works with others to explore ways in which society can best
prepare itself to make the optimal use of new developments.
Pui-lam Law (Patrick)  Ph.D., received his doctoral degree in Sociology from The
University of New South Wales, Australia, and is currently Assistant Professor in
the Department of Applied Social Sciences of The Hong Kong Polytechnic Uni-
versity. His research interest is on modernity and social development in China. He
co-authored (2004) Marriage, Gender, and Sex in a Contemporary Chinese Village,
co-edited (2006) New Technologies in Global Societies, edited (2012) New Con-
nectivities in China: Virtual, Actual and Local Interactions, and was guest editor
Editors and Contributors xiii

(2008) of special issues on ICTs and China and on ICTs and Migrant Workers in
Contemporary China for Knowledge, Technology and Policy 21(1–2). Recently, he
is working on mobile media and political participation.
Antonio B. Moniz  Ph.D., Professor at Universidade Nova Lisboa, Portugal, co-
ordinator of the Ph.D. programme on Technology Assessment, and researcher at
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. He is Portuguese representative at the
TC9 “Computers and Society” of International Federation of Information Process-
ing, since 2006. Coordinated several scientific research projects—on the social
implications of robotics in manufacturing industry, and on intuitive interaction be-
tween humans and industrial robot systems.
Mauro Sarrica  Ph.D., earned his doctoral degree in Personality and Social P ­ sychology.
He is a Researcher at the Department of Communication and Social Research,
Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy. His main interests are social construction of
­knowledge, stability and change of social belied, and peace psychology. He has been
involved in international and interdisciplinary research on Internet and communication
technologies. In these fields he has studied the social representations of ICTs, the impact
of the Internet on journalists’ practices and the use of online forums to motivate and
coordinate collective actions.
Chapter 1
Introduction: Situating the Human
in Social Robots

Sakari Taipale, Jane Vincent, Bartolomeo Sapio, Giuseppe Lugano

and Leopoldina Fortunati

Traditionally the social has been considered as a characteristic of human beings,

not of inanimate machines. At the same time, each technological device can be
considered social born out of a complex process of invention, implementation, dis-
tribution and domestication by users (Hirsch and Silverstone 2004; Lasen 2013).
Since recent technical developments have made possible rather detailed technical
mimicking of human beings and their social features, and incorporating them in
silicon chips, there is a pronounced need to understand to what extent the human-
ness can be implanted in social robots. This is also an occasion to think over and
discuss what the human is when considered in this context of social robots. With
this book we tackle what can be considered as a social robot, which in fact is a
paradoxical term, from a social, cultural and humanistic perspective.

S. Taipale (*) 
University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
e-mail: sakari.taipale@jyu.fi
J. Vincent 
University of Surrey, Surrey, UK
e-mail: j.vincent@surrey.ac.uk
B. Sapio 
Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, Rome, Italy
e-mail: bart@fub.it
G. Lugano 
COST, Brussels, Belgium
e-mail: Giuseppe.Lugano@cost.eu
L. Fortunati 
University of Udine, Udine, Italy
e-mail: fortunati.deluca@tin.it

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 1

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_1
2 S. Taipale et al.

Contrary to the view of hard scientists who say “[N]ever ask a roboticist what a
robot is. The answer changes too quickly” (Nourbakhsh 2013, pp 14–15), this
book asks what a social robot is and what should we think about social robots in
­different areas of everyday life? Viewed from the perspective of social sciences and
humanities, current social robotics research is taking its first steps. Until now, it has
mainly followed the lines of human–computer interaction (HCI) studies. Despite
their many strengths, HCI studies, when not solicited and inspired by social and
human sciences as in the present case, can too easily confine technological artefacts
to a perspective that privileges the machine in the human–technology interactions
(Shaw-Garlock 2011). Hence, HCI studies provide an insufficient research window
on the human side of the technological artefact. In this respect, social robots are
not an exception. From a humanistic and social science perspective, that puts the
human being at the centre of the analysis, humans become human because they are
social and only individuals as social, political and cultural human beings can work
as a model for the social that is now being embedded in robots. The social is still
mainly defined by our experiences of human–human social interactions, although
the interaction among robots and other intelligent machines is increasing.
In many ways, social robotics research has been technologically determined
because engineering solutions, robotic design and technological exploration have
dominated both the design of the robot and the studies on robots (e.g. Breazeal
2004; Nourbakhsh 2013). As with any scientific programme, a particular problem
can be identified when it has an engineering/technological solution; consequently,
often the problem is solved from a machine perspective. Instead of following this
approach, which starts from the technology, this volume focuses on the human
side of the human–technology interaction, where humans play a role as social,
political and cultural actors. This book delivers new knowledge to reflect on what
kind of society we want to build and live in and this includes the robots we build
and use that also tell us about the model of our society (Fortunati 2013). Exploring
social robots from our perspective means that we argue there is the need to start,
not from the problems that can be solved, but from the social practices and how
these practices interact with any technological artefact, social robots included.
Human needs, senses, emotions, desires and attitudes all foreground the discourse.
Looking at robots from an insider social, cultural and humanistic perspective
does not mean that we reject the benefits and outcomes of social robotics tech-
nology. Rather, the book maintains that there is the need to include human sci-
ences and the probable users inside the design of social robots. Moreover, the
book explores how some of these devices and tools have come to be absorbed into
the everyday lives of humans and what are the limits, problems and advantages
of such integration. Although probably many social robots were designed from
a technologically determinist way the users have found ways to domesticate and
engage in interaction.
In many ways, this book is about the social shaping of social robots, and
about the adoption and integration of robots, machines and technologies by tech-
nologically more and more sophisticated humans. Often the machines people
decided to adopt made their lives better and helped them solve ad hoc problems,
1  Introduction: Situating the Human in Social Robots 3

such as by using a set of complicated and wire strewn connectivity linking up

devices and using them for purposes for which they were not designed (Ely et al.
2011). People use machines in real time and when they want to, adapting a lit-
tle to accommodate the inevitable limitations and, at times, unpredictability of the
machine as well as their own human frailties.
The designers and producers of social robots have tried to overcome the mis-
match between machine-to-machine and human-to-human interaction in various
ways, making their machines look uncannily like humans (e.g. Bartneck et al.
2009), like science fiction film (or movie and cartoons) characters (I robot,
Asimov 1950; The Terminator 1984; Futurama), or by focusing on the dexterity of
the device or prosthesis (e.g. drummer arm Georgia Tech1; healthcare robots2—
Scuola Superiore di Sant’Anna di Pisa) rather than on their charm or look. The
machine and its operator is often the more powerful party in the relationship with
the user who must follow the directions or respond to the capabilities and perfor-
mance of the machine. Designers of social robots are constantly looking for ways
to make their solutions more suitable to meet people’s needs, more responsive and
reactive to human behaviours, and able to ‘think’, but the speed, dexterity and
most of all the unpredictability, frailty and vagaries of human behaviours have
proved to be very difficult to conquer.
Understanding more about human’s everyday life practices is foundational to
usefully and practically incorporating social robotics into daily routines. This is
also the centre of the debate in this volume. Viewed from the human perspective,
the volume explores how humans have adopted and accommodated machines into
their lives.
The standpoint adopted in the book may also be explained by dividing the
notion of social robots into two parts: social and robot. In engineer-driven
robotics, the human body is typically taken as a starting point when the aim is
to develop sociable robots. It is only when the physical (often metallic or plas-
tic) body of the robot is sufficiently developed and ready for test use that softer
and smart technologies making the robot social are considered. In that moment,
designers try to embed them in the hardware. These social technologies include
many information and communication technologies (ICTs) and applications that
are already on the consumer market as well as artificial intelligence. Often less
attention is paid to the look and dressing of the robots, which are also important
elements making the robot a more cultural part of the social fabric (Fortunati
2014).
Let us consider now social robots that are targeted at the domestic sphere.
People who are expected to accept them are not used to having industrial-looking
robotic devices in their homes (the majority do not have them in their work places

1http://www.news.gatech.edu/2014/03/05/robotic-prosthesis-turns-drummer-three-armed-cyborg.
2 http://www.robot-era.eu/robotera/index.php?pagina=pagine_personalizzate&blocco=93

&id=96.
4 S. Taipale et al.

either), thus perhaps an alternative approach may be more successful. A large pro-
portion of people in the industrialised North, and also in the global South, are
already familiar with many social ICTs (e.g. mobile phones, the Internet and tablet
computers). Hence, it may be well-justified to also analyse these widely estab-
lished technologies (see, Vincent and Cheng in this volume) with the aim of under-
standing how they are, step by step, being automatized and then roboticised by
incorporating into them new sophisticated features, applications (e.g. Apple’s
voice-driven personal assistant Siri) and even physical extensions, which make
them social robots (e.g. telepresence robots like Double3 which combines an iPad
with a movable base). By taking the everyday life of ordinary people as a starting
point, we may succeed painting a realistic picture of how social robots will
become part of our homes and other private spaces in the foreseeable future.
This book presents an anthropocentric perspective of the social robot by bring-
ing together studies from three continents: Europe, Asia and North America. We
aim to deliver a balanced contribution of empirical studies (both qualitative and
quantitative) and theoretical accounts, in order to widely examine the personal,
social and cultural dimension of social robots. The book is divided in three the-
matic sections. The first of the three themes is Perceptions and Attitudes to Social
Robots. The role of social robots in society is still relatively unexplored including
the understanding of the reasons for their creation, the actions they perform and
their future roles in society. This section brings together chapters that investigate
perceptions of and attitudes towards social robots by using surveys and research
materials collected both nationally and cross-nationally, and by examining country
specific data from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives.
The shift of robots from the field of economic production to the sphere of
social reproduction where people recuperate their physical, affective and mental
resources is discussed in the chapter written by Sakari Taipale, Federico de Luca,
Mauro Sarrica and Leopoldina Fortunati. By conducting a secondary analysis
of large-structured survey data collected in Europe, Taipale et al. show that the
general attitude among Europeans towards robots is positive, anticipating their
further penetration in the markets. Even if Europeans are quite unwilling to have
more robots, especially in the sphere of the social reproduction, the results of the
study disclose some unexpected features in people’s opinions. Contrary to com-
mon beliefs, pensioners are among the most accommodating of Europeans con-
cerning the use of robots in the health care sector, elderly, child and disabled care,
and education. The study by James Katz, Daniel Halpern and Elizabeth Thomas
Crocker deals with the perception and acceptance of robots among US college
students. They contribute to the current knowledge by showing that the human-
likeness of robots is positively associated with students’ willingness to accept
them. Perhaps more interestingly their results clearly indicate that the acceptance
of social robots may be successfully promoted by engaging people first in the use

3http://www.doublerobotics.com/.
1  Introduction: Situating the Human in Social Robots 5

of online communities. Katz et al. show that it is the previous engagement in the
online platforms of social communication through avatars and a sense of belong-
ing to an online community that predict students’ readiness to accept robots. This
study is a signpost indicating that rather than the engineer-driven mimicking of
human-likeness, it is more people’s previous experience in engaging in virtual
worlds that paves the way for social robots.
The perception and acceptance of social robots is also studied by Joachim
Höflich and Afifa El Bayed, who investigate people’s stance towards robots in
Germany. Their study shows how the perception and social representation of
robots is powerfully influenced by popular culture and media. Further, they show
with a small experiment that although people, who try to teach a robot to perform
simple tasks associate much humanity to robots, this humanity also easily disap-
pears when the robot fails to perform certain tasks.
The second part of the book moves from the perceptions and attitudes towards
social robots to Human Interaction with Social Robots. This section presents four
chapters the first two of which explore anthropomorphism in human–robot inter-
action, especially in relation to the process of robot design. Patrick Law’s exam-
ination of the transformation of wheelchairs into social robots in Hong Kong
highlights that the user experience of being made to perform daily tasks within the
constraints of a machine can lead to their rejection of it. The problems caused by
machines must also be taken into consideration while introducing robots into the
workplace and António B. Moniz argues that even in the productive sector many
problems related to robots are not technical but are framed by social aspects. He
maintains that increasingly advanced and sociable robots do not solely make peo-
ple’s work easier and safer, but present new job demands and psychological strain
for human operators. Timo Kaerlein also addresses the design of robots underlin-
ing the need for reducing the complexity of robots by making them human-like
only to a very limited extent. Drawing on the cybernetic theoretical perspective,
he brings to the fore the risk that robotics may also promote dehumanisation
and explores ethical considerations in this regard. His examination of new robot
devices that can be used to express feelings in communications contrasts with
Vincent’s later chapter. The final chapter of this section is authored by Davide
Fornani and Serena Cangiano and it deals with some examples of participatory
design of robots. Drawing from several open-source robot projects, which engage
a wider group of users in the design and development of robots, the authors argue
that in open-source development there is a higher possibility that human needs are
recognised and incorporated in robots than in engineer-driven development. The
authors conclude by proposing some guidelines for designers that should help
them design robots that better meet human needs.
The third theme of the book examines the role of Social Robots in Everyday Life
by way of three chapters that present qualitative analyses on human/social robot
relationships. What is common to these chapters is that they all elaborate possi-
ble pathways to a more widespread adoption of advanced social robots by inves-
tigating automatized and robotised features that are already embedded in ordinary
information and communication technologies, and in new wearable technologies.
6 S. Taipale et al.

Jane Vincent takes the mobile phone as an example of an ordinary device that in
close dependent interaction with its user is developing into an “emotionalised
social-robot” which effectively evokes emotions in the users. Her chapter reflects
one of the most social, humanistic and social scientific approaches to social robots
so far and challenges the normative approach to social robots that are expected to
be involved in the field of social reproduction by arguing that immaterial responses
and communicative actions to a user’s behaviour from a robotic device (e.g. stir-
ring up emotions, predictive text-input learning a user’s vocabulary) are equally and
sometimes even more important than physical actions that robots can perform (e.g.
the manipulation of physical items). Chung-tai Cheng’s contribution considers the
mobile phone—and more specifically a mobile phone based home-school commu-
nication system—as a quasi-robot that indicates a shift towards a more automatized
and roboticised educational system in China. While this approach to social interac-
tion may serve the efficient management of Chinese mass education, at the same
time these processes may strengthen negative aspects of competitiveness between
families and the suppression of individuality in schools. In the last chapter, Elda
Danese takes the close relationship between new technology and fashion as her
starting point while analysing the possible futures of wearable social robotics.
Fashion typically heralds wider societal trends and changes and Danese takes us
through the scope of a broad spectrum of projects examining wearable technolo-
gies and body-related devices, including artificially intelligent systems that react to
changes in environments. In her chapter, fashion becomes portrayed as a feasible
way of introducing social robotics to our day-to-day life.
The book ends with a concluding chapter from the editors, Jane Vincent,
Sakari Taipale, Bartolomeo Sapio, Giuseppe Lugano and Leopoldina Fortunati.
Here the editors weigh the pros and cons of the human standpoint to robotics
adopted and applied in the volume. They assert that the proposed human per-
spective helps demystify the role of robots in contemporary (and future) soci-
eties. They also remind the readers that the chapters of the book show that
people’s attitude towards robots is chiefly positive, despite some common fears
and threats that often label public discourses. According to the editors, the book
also gives reasons to question some deep-rooted ideas in robot research. One of
them relates to the superiority of robotic hardware (manipulators, artificial limbs
etc.) and robotic software as the determinants of what make the robot social. The
other concerns the superiority of a human face to a screen as a user interface. As
­people have accommodated screen-equipped communication and media devices,
which are also increasingly intuitive to use, the screen could provide a genu-
ine gateway for bringing social robots into homes. The conclusion—and with
it the whole book—is ended with a short overview of the limitations and future
research needs.
1  Introduction: Situating the Human in Social Robots 7

References

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Breazeal C (2004) Designing sociable robots. MIT Press, Cambridge
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life-change. In: Pierson J, Mante-Meijer E, Loos E (eds) New media technologies and user
empowerment. Peter Lang Publishing, Berlin, pp 163–180
Fortunati L (2013) Afterword: robot conceptualizations between continuity and innovation.
Intervalla 1:116–129
Fortunati L (2014) Robots approaching the human body: roboticizing fashion and design.
Presentation at the workshop A sociological, psychological and educational perspective on
social robots, Biorobotics Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
Hirsch E, Silverstone R (eds) (2004) Consuming technologies: media and information in d­ omestic
spaces paperback, New edn. Routledge, London
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Nourbakhsh IR (2013) Robot futures. The MIT Press, Cambridge
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pp 1–10
 Part I
Perceptions and Attitudes
to Social Robots
Chapter 2
Robot Shift from Industrial Production
to Social Reproduction

Sakari Taipale, Federico de Luca, Mauro Sarrica

and Leopoldina Fortunati

This chapter analyses people’s attitudes towards the use of robots in the ­different
domains of life and, specifically, in the domain of social reproduction. The anal-
ysis is based on Eurobarometer 382 “Public Attitudes towards Robots” data
(N  = 26,751), which was carried out among EU citizens aged 15 and over in
27 member states in 2012. The results of the study show that on average European
perceptions of robots are positive and permissive. The life domains in which
robots have already been used for a long time (e.g. space exploration, manufac-
turing, military and security business, search and rescue work) turn out to be the
most popular areas for the further penetration of robots. The least preferred life
domains are those, which address the core functions of social reproduction (e.g.
care of children, elderly people and the disabled, education, leisure). With a series
of ordinal logistic regression analyses, we outline the socio-demographic factors
that are associated with the willingness to have more robots in the various fields
of social production. Pensioner’s supportive attitude towards the use of robots in
health care and educational activities is highlighted.

S. Taipale (*) 
University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
e-mail: sakari.taipale@jyu.fi
F. de Luca 
International Energy Agency, Paris, France
e-mail: beckowen86@yahoo.it
M. Sarrica 
University of Rome, Rome, Italy
e-mail: mauro.sarrica@uniroma1.it
L. Fortunati 
University of Udine, Udine, Italy
e-mail: fortunati.deluca@tin.it

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 11

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_2
12 S. Taipale et al.

2.1 Introduction

The industrialised world is experiencing a shift from industrial to social robot-

ics. In terms of social politics, this is an epoch-making change; while automation
and industrial robots first and foremost have affected the demand for mechanical
human work and working conditions in the industrial work (e.g. Zuboff 1988;
Rifkin 1995), social robots are being designed to deal with human care, health,
domestic tasks, entertainment and various other forms of immaterial and mate-
rial tasks which aim to renew human capacities. It is these typically non-mone-
tized domestic tasks that are gathered under the concept of social reproduction
(Fortunati 1995). Consequently, for the first time we have to think about the pos-
sible consequences of robots, not only for industrial production but also for social
reproduction. This shift leads us to study and discuss the relationship between
social robots and the policies that are framed to deal with the problems of social
reproduction.
In this chapter, we analyse people’s attitudes towards the use of robots in
the different domains of life and, specifically, in the domain of social reproduc-
tion (e.g. care, domestic tasks, education, leisure and health). To this end, three
research questions are defined. First, what is the overall attitude towards the use
of robots in Europe? Second, in which domains of life are Europeans most willing
to see more robots in the future? Third, who is most likely to accept robots in the
field of social reproduction in Europe? The types of robots which are within the
scope of this research are human-like and instrument-like robots.
The chapter begins with a description of robots as the targets of social research.
We argue that while industrial robots were involved with a relationship with strong
social groups (like organised labour force), social robots deal increasingly with the
weak social groups, like children, disabled and the old people, which call for spe-
cial attention from social researchers. Where the industrial sector means guaran-
teed and formalised salaries, the strong presence of unions, and highly formalised
work contracts, the reproduction sphere means unwaged work (domestic), lack
of support from unions, and limited formalised negotiation, because it is mainly
considered a “private” sphere. We will then undertake a secondary analysis of
Eurobarometer 382 “Public Attitudes towards Robots” data (N = 26,751), which
was carried out among EU citizens aged 15 and over in 27 member states in 2012.
With this analysis, we will answer our three research questions, and we will then
conclude the chapter by discussing the types of social policies that are needed in
the era of robot-mediated and robot-assisted social reproduction.

2.2 What Changes When Robots Enter the Social Sphere?

The societal role of robots has changed profoundly with the shift from industrial
to domestic robots. There were three main reasons for using robots in industrial
sectors. Robots were introduced to take care of dangerous and/or repetitive jobs, to
2  Robot Shift from Industrial Production to Social Reproduction 13

save human labour and human lives. They were employed to improve the quality
of products (e.g. gluing, spraying, testing, gauging), and production processes (e.g.
assembling). Finally, robots were superior to human labour in terms of guarantee-
ing the regularity of the work, including the fact that they do not go on strike. The
introduction of domestic and assistive robots has enabled us to refine and update
our understanding of robots beyond that of being machines that perform danger-
ous, dirty and monotonous work (Dautenhahn et al. 2005; Kim and Mutlu 2014).
The reasons for using robots in the domestic sphere are different from those
for industrial production. In the domestic sphere, in fact, the products and pro-
cesses with which social robots are expected to be involved are not dangerous for
humans. Similarly, their ability to maintain the regularity and speed of work
are less appreciated properties in this context. On the contrary, social robots are
expected to “make good” and take care of people, work which presents serious
problems of formalisation. Thus, flexibility, adaptability to personal needs and the
ability of complex reasoning are more relevant properties for social robots. It can
also be posited that the increasing interest in the use of robots for social reproduc-
tion might be time related. Women, especially, have increased the time spent on
paid-work between 1970 and 2000, which was maybe accompanied by a decrease
in their supply of unpaid domestic work (Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla 2012). There
is also evidence from some countries that the number of people helping grown-up
family members has dropped between the 1990 to the 2000 (Pääkkönen and Hanifi
2011). At the same time, the spatial and temporal dispersion of families makes
family-based care increasingly difficult to arrange. It is against this backdrop that
social robots can be seen as a way to compensate for this lack of time.
It is equally important to realise that social robots face very different kinds of
counter forces than did industrial robots. While industrial robots function in semi-
public spaces (e.g. factories) which are usually controlled by managers and regu-
lated by workplace policies and labour laws, social robots enter the private sphere
of life, which unfolds in people’s own homes or in nursing homes. Therefore, the
questions of privacy, intimacy and affects, as well as the issue of care labour, come
to the fore. What kind of shared rules and public policies do we need to make sure
that robots are introduced and used in the sphere of social reproduction in a proper
manner? Second, while industrial robots faced the relatively well-organised and
strong labour movement that defended employee rights, today’s trade unions are
somewhat weaker in the face of the global competition over the waged and, par-
ticularly, the unwaged labour force. Actually, the protecting hand of trade unions
has never reached unpaid domestic work. If a ghost in the industrial sector is
the fear of losing a job due to the introduction of robots in certain sectors, in the
domestic sphere this fear does not affect housewives or househusbands who work
without any economic retribution. This fear might, however, affect waged-workers
and professionals in the health care, education, social care and entertainment sec-
tors. Thus, in the sphere of reproduction social robots do not need to fight against
labour movements and trade unions, but they do need to win over the confidence
of individuals and families, with whom they are supposed to work. Finally, ear-
lier robots were designed for industrial work, which mostly employed male labour.
14 S. Taipale et al.

Social robots, conversely, are designed to deal with social reproduction, such as
taking care of children, the elderly, the disabled and the ill, tasks which have tra-
ditionally been carried out mainly by women (Boyer 2004; Sparrow and Sparrow
2006). The importance of this kind of reproductive work has never been truly rec-
ognised by policy makers, as reflected, for example, in the fact that reproductive
work is not included in the gross domestic product (GDP). All in all, social robots
are mainly expected to deal with weak social groups, something which makes it
important to study this new generation of robots from the perspective of social and
policy studies. In addition, social robots work as a kind of boundary object, mark-
ing the line between low-tech home technologies and high-tech industry, mascu-
line devices (robot) and feminine work (e.g. social work, health care), commodity
production (robots for mass-production) and individual reproduction (e.g. person-
alised assistive robots).
This shift from production to reproduction was preceded and supported by the
introduction and development of a series of automated processes of social behav-
iours, which are strongly creating an acceptance of the robotification of society.
We refer here to the processes of automation which affect the areas of taste (Barile
and Sugiyama 2015), communication (Bakardjieva forthcoming; Baron forthcom-
ing), information (Vámos 2009), education and play (Fortunati 2015). These pro-
cesses can be considered as forms of proto-robotification of the immaterial sphere
in society, made necessary by digital technologies that allow an incredibly large
number of people to express their opinions and tastes, to buy and consume goods
(e.g. Shirky 2008).

2.3 From Individuals to Societies and Beyond

In spite of the fact that robots are now entering the home, the analytic level of
social robot studies has been quite limited. It is somewhat paradoxical that while
the role of automatisation and industrial robots has been generally considered,
perceived and analysed as a societal challenge that transforms the labour mar-
ket and work processes (e.g. Rifkin 1995; Frey and Osborne 2013), social robots
have been so far studied largely by analysing the perception and behaviours of
only small groups of individuals (Meister 2014, p. 113). More precisely, roboti-
cists, designers, sociologists and psychologists have mostly investigated individual
and situational factors, such as the perceived human-likeness of a robot (Halpern
and Katz 2014) or the physical distance between a robot and human (e.g. Kim
and Mutlu 2014), that might affect the acceptance and perception of robots (also,
Meister 2014). We argue that it is equally—if not sometimes more—important
to examine the life domains in which people at national and supranational lev-
els are most willing to live and work with social robots (see also Enz et al. 2011;
Takayama et al. 2008). Identifying the wider attitudes and perceptions, as well as
the type of people behind them, contributes to a better understanding of robots.
As social robots enter the reproduction sphere, including elderly people’s homes,
2  Robot Shift from Industrial Production to Social Reproduction 15

children’ rooms and kindergartens, it is crucial to understand which of these areas

are receptive to robots.
To solve the large and complex social problems of contemporary societies, such
as those related to the use of robots in social reproduction, both scientific knowl-
edge and the opinions of citizens must be included in the decision-making process.
While new technical solutions are certainly needed in this endeavour, it is equally
important to understand how economic, social, political and cultural aspects of life
shape the contemporary attitudes and opinions of citizens towards robots.

2.4 Data and Measurements

This chapter is based on a secondary analysis of Eurobarometer 382 “Public

Attitudes towards Robots” data (N = 26,751).1 This survey was carried out among
EU citizens aged 15 and over in 27 member states in 2012. Respondents were
interviewed face-to-face at home in their mother tongue (Eurobarometer 2012). To
our knowledge, this survey is the most extensive so far, although not issue-free,
attempting to gauge public opinion and citizens’ attitudes towards robots. It covers
a wide area of robotic applications and includes a good set of attitude measures. At
the same time, however, it provided respondents with a rather narrow image of
what robots were by presenting only two pictures of robots (Eurobarometer 2012,
p. 4). The characteristics of the sample are reported in Table 2.1.
In order to investigate European attitudes towards robots in the shift from the
industrial to the domestic sector, we analysed the answers given to the following
two questions: “In which areas do you think robots should be used as a priority?”
and “In which areas do you think that the use of robots should be banned?” A
maximum of three answers per question was allowed. For both questions, the fol-
lowing domains of life were supplied as answer choices: Manufacturing; health-
care; leisure; domestic use (such as cleaning); military and security; search and
rescue; education; care of children, elderly, and the disabled; space exploration;
agriculture; transport/logistics. Respondents could also choose “other domains,”
“none of them” or reply “I don’t know.” Based on these two original questions, we
created a new measure to indicate the overall attitude towards robots (range = −3
to 3, mean = 0.679, standard deviation = 1.199). This variable summarises the
answers regarding the use and banning of robots in the above-mentioned fields.
The answers to the first questions were given a positive sign, while those to the
second were given a negative sign, and thus this new variable ranges between −3
and +3. We then created ordinal variables indicating the willingness to see robots
in the various domains. The values of these domains-specific attitude measures
vary between −1 (ban), 0 (indifference) and 1 (use as a priority).

1European Commission, Brussels: Eurobarometer 77.1 February–March 2012. TNS OPINION

& SOCIAL, Brussels [Producer]; GESIS, Cologne [Publisher]: ZA5597, dataset version 2.0,
doi: 10.4232/1.11481.
16 S. Taipale et al.

Table 2.1  Description of the sample (non-weighted)

% N % N
Gender Children
• Men 48.3 12,928 • Family with children 40.3 10,786
• Women 51.7 13,823 • Family without children 58.3 15,604
Total 100.0 26,751 • No answer 1.4 361
Total 100.0 26,751
Age Degree of urbanisation
• 15–17 4.9 1,322 • Rural area/village 34.0 9,095
• 18–24 9.4 2,516 • Small/medium-sized town 40.1 10,719
• 25–44 32.7 8,744 • Large town/city 25.9 6,916
• 45–64 32.2 8,623 • No answer 0.1 21
• 65+ 20.7 5,545 Total 100.0 26,751
Total 100.0 26,751
Education Country
• Low education 20.1 5,365 • Austria 3.9 1,031
• Medium education 42.4 11,348 • Belgium 3.9 1,051
• High education 30.8 8,227 • Bulgaria 3.8 1,006
• No Answer 6.8 1,812 • Cyprus 1.9 506
Total 100.0 26,751 • Czech Republic 3.7 1,003
• Denmark 3.8 1,019
Years of education • Estonia 3.7 1,000
• 15 or less 21.1 5,570 • Finland 3.7 1,003
• 16–19 47.6 12,540 • France 4.0 1,059
• 20 or more 31.2 8,227 • Germany 5.8 1,552
• No answer 1.6 415 • Greece 3.7 999
Total 100.0 26,751 • Hungary 3.8 1,021
Activity • Ireland 3.8 1,008
• Worker 49.2 13,163 • Italy 3.9 1,036
• Housewife/-husband 7.9 2,107 • Latvia 3.8 1,024
• Unemployed 8.5 2,280 • Lithuania 3.8 1,021
• Pensioner 25.3 6,761 • Luxembourg 1.9 501
• Student 9.1 2,441 • Malta 1.9 500
Total 100.0 26,751 • Netherlands 3.8 1014
• Poland 3.7 1,000
• Portugal 3.8 1,009
Social class • Romania 3.8 1,020
• Low 20.5 5,487 • Slovakia 3.7 1,000
• Medium 50.7 13,552 • Slovenia 3.8 1,017
• Medium-high 26.2 7,002 • Spain 3.8 1,004
• No answer 2.7 710 • Sweden 3.8 1,016
Total 100.0 26,751 • United Kingdom 5.0 1,331
(continued)
2  Robot Shift from Industrial Production to Social Reproduction 17

Table 2.1  (continued)
% N % N
Income Total 100.0 26,751
• Low 9.9 2,641
• Medium 25.4 6,789
• Medium-high 62.0 16,588
• No answer 2.7 732
Total 100.0 26,751
Family
• Couple with children 32.2 8,616
• Couple without 29.4 7,860
children
• Single 28.9 7,744
• One parent and 6.4 1,714
children
• Mixed families 1.7 456
• No answer 1.4 361
Total 100.0 26,751

2.5 Results

Eurobarometer (2012, p. 6) report on the analysed data concludes that, among all
EU citizens, 70 % have either a positive or very positive view of robots. To fur-
ther investigate Europe’s general stand on robots, we analysed the overall attitude
indicator. Figure 2.1 shows that a large number of respondents, 41 %, provided
the same number of answers to both questions inquiring about the areas of life
in which robots should or should not be used. Almost 50 % of respondents chose
more positive responses than negative ones. Only 10 % of respondents selected
more domains where robots should be banned than those where they should be
used. In response to the first research question, it results that on average European
perceptions of robots are positive and permissive.
Regarding the second research question, Table 2.2 illustrates the life domains
where Europeans would like to use robots as a priority. It turns out that life
domains in which robots have already been used for a long time, such as space
exploration and manufacturing, as well as life areas in which robots can clearly
save human lives, such as military and security business and search and rescue
work, are the most popular areas. After these four domains, the public support for
robots drops quite dramatically.
Approximately 22 % of Europeans would like to see robots first and foremost in
health care, 13 % in domestic activities, transportation and agriculture. Clearly, the least
preferred life domains are those, which serve the core functions of social reproduction.
18 S. Taipale et al.

Overall attitude towards robots (%)

41.1

24.0

16.4

8.5
6.8
0.9 2.4

-3 (Very -2 -1 0 1 2 3 (Very
negative) (Indifferent) positive)

Fig. 2.1  Overall attitudes of Europeans towards robots (%)

Table 2.2  The domains Life domain n %

of life in which robots are
Space exploration 13,895 51.9
supported by Europeans
(weighted) Manufacturing 13,282 49.7
Search and rescue 11,016 41.2
Military and security 10,937 40.9
Health care 6,007 22.5
Domestic activity 3,574 13.4
Transportation 2,962 11.1
Agriculture 2,813 10.5
Child/elderly/disabled care 947 3.5
Education 694 2.6
Leisure 670 2.5
Note Domains of social reproduction are in bold

These include care of children, elderly people and the disabled, education where the
labour force of tomorrow is qualified and updated, and leisure, which refers to the time
that people take for themselves to recover from work and their other duties.
As the shift from production to reproduction in robot use and research forms
the basis of this study, we ran a series of ordinal logistic regressions in order to
investigate the socio-demographic profile of the Europeans who are ready to see
robots in social reproduction. Table 2.3 presents the results of these regression
analyses considering health care, child/elderly/disabled care, domestic work, lei-
sure and education, which enables us to answer our third research question.
Europeans who consider themselves as belonging to the highest social classes are
more willing to see robots in health care than people who consider themselves in the
lower social strata. Pensioners are more in favour of robots in health care than any
other activity group, while single parent families are less receptive towards the use
of robots in health care than the other family types. Willingness to have more robots
in health care also increases with years of education and size of place of residence.
Table 2.3  Ordinal regression models for domain-specific attitudes
Independent variable Health care Care of children, elderly, Domestic use Leisure Education
(reference group) and the disabled
Social class (lowest)
Medium −0.065 (0.051) – – – –
High 0.170 ** (0.060)
Activity (Employee)
Housewife/househusband −0.072 (0.083) 0.058 (0.084) – – 0.163 (0.085)
Unemployed 0.034 (0.073) 0.033 (0.777) 0.077 (0.778)
Pensioner 0.221*** (0.051) 0.188*** (0.048) 0.188*** (0.052)
Student −0.090 (.072) 0.224** (0.081) −0.066 (0.087)
Family (couple with children)
Couple without children −0.061 (0.051) – 0.070 (0.062) – –
One parent and children −0.126* (0.053) 0.101 (.066)
Mixed families −0.097 (.084) 0.206 (0.108)
Single −0.154 (0.122) −0.290* (0.144)
City (Rural area/village)
Small or medium-sized town 0.020 (.046) 0.118**(0.050) – – –
2  Robot Shift from Industrial Production to Social Reproduction

Large town/city 0.150** (0.049) 0.155** (0.052)

Years of Education (15 or less)
16−19 0.109* (0.055) – 0.281*** (0.073) −186** (0.068) −0.066 (0.059)
20 or more 0.294*** (0.061) 0.377*** (0.078) −0.066 (0.071) −0.165* (0.065)
(continued)
19
Table 2.3  (continued)
20

Independent variable Health care Care of children, elderly, Domestic use Leisure Education
(reference group) and the disabled
Age (15–18)
19–24 – – −0.369* (0.170) – –
25–44 −0.448** (0.157)
45–64 −0.655*** (0.155)
65+ −0.637*** (0.159)
N 24,916 25,119 24,741 24,632 24,663

* = p < .05; ** = p < .01; *** = p < .001

Note Standard errors are in brackets. A positive coefficient indicates greater agreement with the use of robots. All models are controlled for the effect of
country differences. Of other independent variables, only significant predictors were included
S. Taipale et al.
2  Robot Shift from Industrial Production to Social Reproduction 21

The use of robots for caring for children, the elderly and the disabled was pre-
dicted only by the respondents’ main activity and the size of respondent’s place
of abode. In this respect, pensioners and students seem to be keenest to support
the introduction of robots. It is particularly surprising to see that pensioners are
significantly more likely to accept the use of robots in the care sectors than are
the employed. People living in large towns and cities are more open to have more
robots in the care sectors than people living in smaller town or villages.
Robots in the domestic activities seem to be mainly associated with three vari-
ables. First of all, singles are less likely than families with children to support the
use of robots for domestic tasks. This makes sense as singles have comparatively
fewer domestic duties than other kinds of family, and they would thus benefit less
from domestic robots. Second, medium and long-term education is positively
associated with the use of robots in domestic tasks. Third, the older the respond-
ents are, the less likely they are to believe that there should be more robots taking
care of domestic tasks.
In terms of supporting the introduction of robots to leisure activities, responses
are instead particularly associated with the number of respondent’s years of edu-
cation. Those with from 16 to 19 years of education, which corresponds to a
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree, are less likely than respondents with less educa-
tion to support robots in leisure activities. Finally, people’s willingness to see more
robots in the education sector is mainly related to two factors: pensioners are more
open to such robotic solutions than workers, while, conversely, the most educated
people (with 20 or more years of education) are in this respect more critical than
less educated.

2.6 Discussion and Conclusions

In this study we analysed European opinions on robots in general and, specifi-

cally, in the sectors of social reproduction. The analysis shows that a shift from
their use in production to reproduction is not wanted by the majority of Europeans.
Although the overall attitude towards robots is positive, permissive attitude
towards the penetration of robots in the field of social reproduction in particular
is still limited. A more careful investigation of this opposed area revealed some
intriguing weak, but important signs for the future of social robotics.
First, against all prejudices, pensioners do not seem to be reluctant about the
use of robots in social reproduction. On the contrary, they are significantly more
supportive of the use of robots in health, care and educational activities than, for
instance, workers. Thus, one may provocatively ask whether those who are con-
cerned with the wider use of social robots might be their loved ones, who feel
guilty about their inability to provide care, rather than the ageing pensioners them-
selves, who would benefit from assistive robots.
In terms of social policy, we must be careful not to neglect pensioners’
own will by falling into stereotypic beliefs that older people are not ready for
22 S. Taipale et al.

technological innovations. Some experimental studies also hint that elderly people
accept assistive social robots surprisingly well (Cavallo et al. 2014), even if the
acceptance of robotic help seems to depend on the type of task. While a robot is
sometimes preferred over a human by elderly people in instrumental tasks such as
changing a light bulb or doing laundry, humans are favoured over robots in per-
sonal tasks, such as care and leisure activities (Smarr et al. 2014). Although they
are easily seen as a weak social group (Fortunati 2014), we must remember that
today’s pensioners, if compared to the elderly of the past, are wealthier, live longer
and more technologically savvy. Consequently, they should not be seen as passive
recipients of social robotic technology, but as active co-designers and selective
consumers of future robot devices and applications.
Second, as so often in the history of new technologies, large cities seem to be
the most favourable places for the introduction of robots into the health and care
sectors. While in villages and smaller towns attitudes towards the care and health
services seem to still be more families and community oriented, in the large cities
people are used to relying more on external or technological aid. Robots replacing
a non-family caregiver, or an unknown medical professional, or acting as media-
tors between a person and a family doctor, might not be considered such a big
problem as a robot replacing a family carer. It is also interesting to note that for
the use of robots in domestic tasks and less intimate fields of social reproduction,
such as leisure and education, the size of the place of residence does not matter.
The answers of the respondents to this Eurobarometer survey, who represent
the voice of European citizens, are very important. Even if people still fear that
they might lose jobs because of robots, the use of robots in the production sec-
tor is currently not their main concern when compared to social and individual
reproduction sectors. In conclusion, the main concerns relate to the use of robots
in care, healthcare and education. These are the areas that involve many social
interactions and much human contact, and which in the age of sociable robots are
presented as the new and prominent environment to which robots should be intro-
duced. The concern regarding fewer human contacts partly relates to a misbelief
that the use of social robots always aims to replace human beings or human tasks,
when in fact the most frequent aim of social robots is to support and enhance
user abilities or assist human carers in heavy tasks (Sparrow and Sparrow 2006;
Cavallo et al. 2011). This misbelief is very probably related to the idea that the
same logic that applied to the production sphere, where the introduction of robots
primarily aimed to replace workers with more efficient machines, would be
exported to the field of social reproduction. On the contrary, the logic that shapes
the reproduction sphere is different, if not opposite, because the needs to be met
are different.
From a technical point of view, social robots could be designed and developed
to serve almost every aspect of daily life. Moreover, a substantial contribution
from robots and other novel technologies is especially needed to ease reproductive
tasks in the domestic sphere, when the double burden of work and care on women
in particular is heavy in current European societies. However, at the same time
there is a resistance among Europeans towards the penetration of robots in the
2  Robot Shift from Industrial Production to Social Reproduction 23

reproductive sphere. Taking public opinions into account in the decision making
and trying to understand the reasons behind these opinions, increase the possibility
that the design and implementation processes of social robots will be more suit-
able to European citizens’ needs and not immediately rejected or prejudged.

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Chapter 3
In the Company of Robots: Views
of Acceptability of Robots in Social Settings

James E. Katz, Daniel Halpern and Elizabeth Thomas Crocker

Society is moving toward a situation in which “socially intelligent robots” are part
of human social life (Zhao 2006). Hence, it is important to explore how people
experience, communicate with, and conceive of robots in their social and physical
environments. Also important is to consider how people see the various roles for
robots and how their comfort levels may vary depending on robotic functions and
appearances.

3.1 Introduction and Literature Review

Since the mid-1980s, the themes human/robot interactions have continued to be

explored not just from literary viewpoints but also from social scientific ones.
Fortunati et al. (2003) delineated numerous ways that robots and humans have
had meaningful interactions and become part of human conceptions. Katz (2003)
showed that within numerous social domains there is a growing importance of
electronic representations in social interaction. Studies done on human–robot
interactions (HRI) also confirm that people tend to invest “human-ness” onto

J.E. Katz (*) 
Boston University’s College of Communication, Boston, MA, USA
e-mail: profjameskatz@gmail.com
D. Halpern 
Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
e-mail: dmhalper@uc.cl
E.T. Crocker 
Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
e-mail: liminalphase@gmail.com

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 25

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_3
26 J.E. Katz et al.

artificial entities. For example, Friedman et al. (2003) analyzed conversations in

discussion forums dedicated to Sony’s robotic dog AIBO and found that 47 % of
participants spoke about the its biological essences; 42 % of the forums’ members
spoke of AIBO as having intentional behavior; 38 % of the commentators believed
it had feelings, and most incredibly 39 % spoke of AIBO as being capable of being
raised, developing, and maturing.
The anthropomorphic qualities of robots lead human partners to treat human-
oid social robots as real persons (Fong et al. 2002; Duffy 2003). Likewise, when
robots are capable of natural language speech patterns and can demonstrate self-
directed behaviors, human observers tend to attribute human-like qualities to the
robots. This is because the robots invoke social-psychological processes able to
affect human behavior in ways similar to the presence of a human companion
(Schermerhorn et al. 2008). As such systems take on sophisticated human forms,
it has also been argued that judgments of moral accountability increasingly come
into play (Friedman and Millett 1995). These studies suggest that for robots to
be successful assistants simple completion of tasks and efficacy is not enough.
Rather, they need to exhibit naturalistic behaviors and appropriate emotional
responses so that their human interactants will accept their environmental presence
and be willing to engage.
Yet human communications are increasingly mediated by information tech-
nologies. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has historically been framed
as an impersonal phenomenon that encourages uncivil discourse such as flam-
ing and trolling as well as group-based stereotyping due to deindividualization
(Kiesler et al. 1984; Short et al. 1976; Spears and Lea 1992). Scholars have pre-
sented numerous theoretical frameworks to justify this stance. The Social Presence
model argues that the fewer channels a medium has the lower the social presence
afforded by the medium. Therefore, low-channel CMC makes it more difficult to
build relationships than face-to-face communication since the former is perceived
to be cold and impersonal while the latter is warm and sociable (Short et al. 1976).
These conditions discourage communicative partners from seeing one another
as potential friends because they lack the social cues and contexts that develop
the conversational partner as a full complex person. In other words, “as band-
width narrows, media allow less ‘social presence’; communication is likely to be
described as less friendly, emotional, or personal and more serious, businesslike,
or task oriented” (Rice and Love 1987, p. 88). Another influential theory has been
the Reduced Social Cues approach and Social Identity Model of Deindividuation
Effects (SIDE), which argues that CMC’s relative lack of social cues create an
atmosphere where users may find it easier to express unpleasant sentiments and
harsh decisions because they feel divorced from the human consequences of their
actions. They do not have to witness the emotional fallout and distress caused
by their words. These conditions also lead to heightened group identity and bor-
der patrolling. “Deindividuation theory proposes that behavior becomes socially
deregulated under conditions of anonymity and group immersion, as a result of
reduced self-awareness” (Spears et al. 2002, p. 94). SIDE theory postulates that
when the individual’s identity is not salient, the identity of the group becomes
3  In the Company of Robots: Views of Acceptability of Robots … 27

paramount and this in-group identity leads to stereotyping and ostracizing of

out-group members. These theories all suggest that communications and interac-
tions through technology would reduce investment of humanness on the interact-
ants regardless of whether they were human or robot.
However, despite these limitations research shows that users find ways to
increase CMC richness to achieve meaningful socially oriented communication.
McCormick and McCormick (1992) show that communication partners can over-
come the lack of face-to-face social cues through interpreting natural language
speech patterns, questions and disclosures, or imbuing their messages with social
meaning by using emoticons and punctuation. These methods augment the mean-
ing of textual electronic messages in ways that convey some of the expressive con-
texts of verbal conversations (Walther and D’Addario 2001). Walther (1992, 1994)
suggests that the social information-processing (SIP) model can explain these
discrepancies. SIP argues that the impression development process takes longer
in CMC, but given sufficient time the differences between CMC and face-to-face
communications diminish since users have the capability of adapting the medium
and find ways to overcome its limitations. This model recognizes that the nonver-
bal and lack of body language cues limit the scope of exchanges but by investing
more time and messaging the relational effects into CMC can be brought to the
same level as comparable face-to-face relationships. Communicative partners can
read and recognize the humanity of the partner on the other side of the computer.
This is important for understanding how we approach studying human interactions
with robots because it is possible this process predisposes us to invest human-
ness in our CMC communicative partner even if that partner is not human. If the
robotic communicator is able to properly mimic social cues, emotions, and appro-
priate responses this closeness could develop over an extended period.
Studies have also found that online communities can increase social ties and
emotional support between users (Boase and Wellman 2006); the internet appears
to be supplementing rather than supplanting prior human communications (Katz
and Rice 2002), that online communities are useful for creating and maintain-
ing weak tie networks (Ellison et al. 2007; Kavanaugh et al. 2005), and extend-
ing social interactions and supporting community building (Williams 2006). Even
more, researchers have adopted the idea behind a sense of community—defined
as a “feeling that members have of belonging, that members matter to one another
and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their
commitment to be together” (McMillan and Chavis 1986, p. 9)—to online envi-
ronments, applying the term “sense of online community” (Katz and Aspden 1997;
Quan-Haase et al. 2002; Wellman et al. 2003). Individuals who build and engage
with communities online are also able to receive similar social and emotional
gratification in offline settings as well. Thus, frequent online users are accus-
tomed to communicating meaningfully with others whom they have never met in
person, incorporating them into their community, and even developing emotional
connections.
While traveling and elsewhere, we have become accustomed to technology
mediating our communications and exchanges even in contexts that are in person
28 J.E. Katz et al.

and seemingly socially active. These different aspects—anthropomorphism of the

robot, frequent meaningful communicative events over CMC with humans some
of whom users have never met in person, and the increasing ways that nonhuman
interactions mediate the everyday—may all be important for considering social
outcomes of HRI and whether humans will accept robots as part of their social and
environmental lives. These prior experiences inform the ways that users will con-
ceptualize, respond to, and internalize interactions with robots.

3.2 Cultural and Demographic Differences

in Robot Perception and Acceptance

Another important factor to consider may also be the cultural differences between
groups and how this impacts acceptance of and interactions with robots (Halpern
and Katz 2012). For example, in Japan, Shinto and Buddhist traditions both allow
for conceptualizing robots as beings with spirit energy and the same vital forces
that human beings have. There is also a long history in Japan of incorporating
dolls into the social lives of individuals and even a Shinto shrine dedicated to pro-
viding proper funerals for dolls and housing their spirits. Japanese pop culture
depictions of the future and alternate universes frequently include sentient robots
that are integrated into the characters’ social worlds and express a wide range
of personalities and qualities many of which are positive (Shaw-Garlock 2009).
Conversely, in America the most prevalent religious philosophies are Judeo-
Christian, which does not allow space for inanimate objects to house souls. Shaw-
Garlock also points out that when Western pop culture does depict sentient robots
and artificial life it tends to focus heavily on the dangers of losing control over
such creations and that this creates a deeply embedded cultural fear of machines.
This fear, she argues, hinders acceptance of robots within Western cultures to the
same extent as they are accepted in Japan (2009). However, it is worth pointing
out that there are also dystopian visions of robotic futures and artificial life in
Japanese anime such as the classic Ghost in the Shell: Puppetmaster. However,
space considerations preclude further examination of this topic.
Differences within populations also play a role in how people respond to
robots. For example, research has found that men tend to think of robots as more
human-like than women do (Schermerhorn et al. 2008). Women instead tend to
see robots as more machine-like and characterize them as less socially desirable.
Nomura and colleagues conducted a separate study that yielded similar results in
that women had more pronounced negative attitudes than men did toward situa-
tions involving interactions with robots (Nomura et al. 2009). These studies sug-
gest that gender socialization may deeply impact interactions with robots, and
therefore generalizations about cultural groups may be overly broad. Within any
culture there are numerous subcultures and demographic differences that research-
ers need to pay closer attention to and directly address.
3  In the Company of Robots: Views of Acceptability of Robots … 29

3.3 Research Studies

To better understand the ways that Americans currently interact with and respond
to robots, and to test some of these suggestions, authors Katz and Halpern con-
ducted a study (Halpern and Katz 2012; Halpern and Katz 2013; Katz and Halpern
2014). Though previous research has explored how people respond socially to
robots’ appearance and the effect of robots with humanoid aspects on attitudes
toward robots, little has been done on individual level factors that moderate this
relationship or how perceptions of human-like qualities in robots might relate to
other background aspects of users such as use of certain information and com-
munication technologies (ICT), gender roles, religious backgrounds, and previous
experiences with robots. Americans do not belong to a homogenous culture nor do
they all share the same experiences which means that it is important to understand
the ways in which these individual level factors affect study results and what that
might mean for the future of robots.
The first part of the study explored the relationship between recognition of
human-likeness qualities in robots, social uses of ICT, and acceptance of robots
based upon the following research question:
For individuals, controlling for exposure to robot type, what is the relationship between
activities that represent social uses of ICT and the willingness to accept robots as part of
their social and physical environments?

This is based upon the idea that just as users adapt to a given electronic medium
when they use it to communicate meaningfully with other users despite the lack
of social cues, they will find similar ways to adapt to communications with robots
(Walther 1997). The authors also predicted that users with a high sense of online
community, high engagements with avatars, and a high level of perceived compe-
tence communicating with ICT would show a greater level of recognition of more
human-like cues in robots. This will lead to relatively higher acceptance of robots
as part of their social and physical environments.
In order to test this, a between-subjects empirical study was designed to iden-
tify human response to robots’ appearances and their perceptions of robots. The
participants were 789 undergraduate students (470 women, 283 men, 36 uniden-
tified) enrolled in six communication courses at a large northeastern university.
They ranged in age from 18 to 30 (M  = 20.1, SD = 1.628). They were divided
randomly into three groups and each group was exposed to an image of a differ-
ent type of robot: Romeo, a French humanoid robot designed by Aldebaran to
assist the elderly and disabled persons; the AIBO robotic dog designed by Sony,
and an android with an extreme robotic appearance. The images of these robots
were embedded within the questionnaire that participants completed online meas-
uring their willingness to accept robots, the degree of human-like characteris-
tics they perceived in them. The questionnaire also covered self-reports of their
competence with ICT, engagement with avatars, and sense of online community.
Demographic data was obtained to investigate topics of religion, gender, and age.
The questionnaire utilized both dependent and independent scales. The dependent
30 J.E. Katz et al.

scales measured human-likeness and robotic social distance and the independent
scales looked at competence with ICT, engagement with avatars in video games,
and sense of online community. Religion, use of internet, use of Second Life, age,
and gender were control variables.
Congruent with previous studies, participants who were exposed to humanoid
robots recognized more human-likeness (M = 3.25, SD = 1.39), than in the android
(M  = 2.93, SD = 1.43) or the doggy robot conditions (M  = 2.73, SD = 1.25).
However, no significant differences were found between the android and doggy robot
conditions. Nor was recognition of human-likeness alone in humanoid robots clear
evidence those participants would be more likely to accept them. Results also show
that participants with high sense of community (F(1723) = 13.53, p < 0.001) and
individuals who engage more with avatars (F(1731) = 48.5, p < 0.001) both recog-
nized significantly more human-likeness in robots. Additionally, engagement with
avatars (β = 0.138, p ≤ 0.001) as well as sense of online community (β = 0.152,
p  ≤ 0.001) were both related positively to willingness to accept robots, even after
controlling for demographic and robots’ appearance. Interestingly, there was no sig-
nificant effect for individuals who reported higher levels of competence communicat-
ing with ICT suggesting that just using ICT is not enough to change how individuals
respond to or accept robots. Neither gender nor religion was associated with recogni-
tion or lack thereof of human qualities in robots but it did correspond strongly with
acceptance. Running a SEM model confirmed that avatar engagement and a sense of
online community were significant predictors of robotic social distance.
This study showed a few important things. First, exposure to humanoid designs
increases recognition of human-likeness in robots but does not affect attitudes
toward them. Participants’ willingness to accept robots as part of their social worlds
does not seem impacted by whether they recognized human-like qualities in those
robots. The authors had hypothesized that following the same process of face-to-
face human interactions, in which recognizing a person’s identity and discovering
similarities are relevant to developing social relationships (Kanda et al. 2004), rec-
ognition of human-likeness in robots would lead participants to accept them more.
However, recognition of human-likeness could explain only 8 % of the variance,
which means that more than 90 % of the willingness to accept robots depends on
other variables not necessarily related to human-likeness. However, gender and reli-
gion were both strong predictors with men being more accepting and adherents of
Judeo-Christian religions less likely to be accepting. This reinforces the idea that
there are factors more important than exposure to visual stimulus of human-likeness
when it comes to acceptance of robots in social and professional environments.
Philosophical and cultural values held by respondents and cultural gender roles
clearly impact comfort and acceptance levels concerning robots and their social rou-
tines. One limitation of this study was that all respondents were undergraduates at
the same university, which limits the generalizability of the findings. Future research
could explore the impact of religion, culture, and gender in-depth and tease out more
nuanced factors that influence these issues from a wider demographic spectrum.
Second, this showed that while the use of ICT to communicate had little
impact on willingness to accept robots, a sense of online community and avatar
3  In the Company of Robots: Views of Acceptability of Robots … 31

engagement did. Time spent using the internet as well as experience with Second
Life (an online digital world where users interact with other human users through
avatars) did not make a significant difference in acceptance. One possible expla-
nation for this is that there is a difference between how frequently participants
use this technology versus the ways in which they use that technology. Research
suggests that informational and social uses of the Internet encourage community
involvement and foster civic participation (Norris 2002; Shah et al. 2005), argu-
ing that it is not time spent using a particular medium that makes a difference but
rather how individuals use it (Norris 2002). In this study, the variables of using the
Internet to get support from other peers, share knowledge, and meet others like
them, and the feeling that the Internet made the respondent feel part of a larger
community (all items represented in sense of online community) was positively
associated with recognizing human-likeness. However, spending more time online
did not necessarily indicate a higher recognition of human-likeness in robots.
Likewise, individuals who indicated they engaged emotionally with avatars were
more likely to recognize human-likeness, but not those who only interacted with
avatars. This might explain the Second Life data since while there are opportu-
nities to engage with other users’ avatars it is minimal and the primary focus of
the game is to create wealth and material goods for players’ own avatars. In other
words, emotional engagement with other avatars as full moral and emotional fig-
ures is not part of the average user experience in Second Life.
However, if the capacity to recognize human-likeness is indeed enhanced by
more social use and engagement of ICT this study should have found a positive
relationship between individuals who claim higher levels of competence com-
municating through ICT with others. Yet, the results did not show this either in
recognition of human-likeness or attitude toward robots. One possible explanation
is that increased exposure to technology and perhaps even robots in real life also
increases respondents’ awareness of their limitations. Tech savvy users have more
realistic expectations for robots’ capabilities, the ways that responses are part of
their programs, and the kinds of tasks that robots excel at and ones they do not
(Halpern and Katz 2012). Bartneck et al. (2005) reasoned along similar lines to
explain why Japanese participants with a high degree of competence and experi-
ence using technology were more likely to indicate they felt uneasy about the idea
of robots having emotions than less technologically savvy participants.
This second part of the study focused on exploring how attitudes about the
­suitability of robots for various occupations in society and how those attitudes
might vary depending on robot appearance. The study also looked at individual
level factors such as religion, gender, and experiences with several forms of tech-
nology. Two primary research questions framed this study:
For individuals, controlling for robots’ appearance, what is the relationship between gen-
der, religiosity, and perceived competence with communication technologies, engagement
with virtual reality environments, avatars, and attitudes toward robots?
For individuals, controlling for types of robots, what is the relationship between attitudes
toward robots and the occupations for which robots are believed to be qualified?
32 J.E. Katz et al.

In order to answer these research questions, participants were asked to look at

the robot (as was explained in the first part of the study) and then think about the
needs that people in general have on a regular day. A list of 28 different occu-
pations for robots was developed, and participants had to indicate how interested
they would be in having the robot doing the different activities/occupations. The
items were subjected to principal components analysis. The first component
consisted of twelve items, which were occupations related to social and public
assistant tasks (Cronbach α = .92). We called this first factor Robots as Social
Companions. Factor two, Robots as Surveillance beings, consisted of five occu-
pations related to military and security tasks (α = .87). The third factor, titled
Personal Assistance, was composed of five occupations oriented to assisting sub-
jects with different chores and household tasks. Then, subjects were asked to
express how they would feel interacting with robots based on 25 items that show
positive and negative aspects in this interaction. The items were subjected to prin-
cipal components analysis and a three-factor solution was used. The first compo-
nent Robot Liking (Cronbach α = .81), consisted of eight items, each of which
shows a preference for robots. Factor two, Cyber-Dystopian (Cronbach α = .71),
consisted of five items related to negative social consequences of the use of robots.
The third factor titled Robotphobia (Cronbach α = .79), was composed of seven
items that mixed negative attitudes and emotions in the interaction with robots.
To test the relationship between the variables mentioned in our first research
question of this second part of the study and attitudes toward robots, hierarchi-
cal multivariate ordinary-least squares (OLS) regressions were run to account for
potential rival explanations and to assess the exact contribution of each block of
predictors to the three factors constructed: Robot-Liking, Robotphobia, and Cyber-
Dystopian. The total variance in robot-liking explained by the regression model
was 27.1 %. The block of technological variables had a higher explanatory power
compared to the demographic block, due to the strong relationship between avatar
engagement and robot-liking. Recognition of human-likeness was also positively
related to robot-liking (β  = 0.317, p < 0.001), and even controlling by type of
robots to which participants were exposed, subjects that recognized more human
qualities in robots liked them much more than participants who recognized less
human qualities. Recognition of human-likeness in robots was negatively corre-
lated with robotphobia (β  =  −0.148, p < 0.001), suggesting individuals who do
perceive human-like qualities in robots are less likely to hold negative attitudes
and emotional responses in their interactions with them. Similar to the first study,
Judeo-Christian religion was negatively related to Robot-Liking (β  =  −0.176,
p < 0.1), but religiosity did not have a significant impact on it. However, r­ eligiosity
was positively related to Robotphobia (β  = 0.061, p < 0.01), which means that
more religious individuals have a more fearful attitude toward robots. Gender
also played a role with women negatively related to Robot-Liking (β = −0.569,
p < 0.001) and positively associated with Robotphobia (β = 0.555, p < 0.001).
Interestingly, respondents with a high competence with ICT showed a positive
relation to Cyber-Dystopia (β = 0.104, p < 0.05), indicating a generally negative
attitude toward robots and supporting the explanation from study one. Individuals
3  In the Company of Robots: Views of Acceptability of Robots … 33

who have interacted with others in a MMORPG showed a marginally significant

negative relationship with Cyber-Dystopian (β = −0.314, p = 0.07), which sup-
ports the idea that those who interact in virtual environments will show a more
positive attitude toward robots. However, individuals highly engaged with avatars
were positively related to Robot-Liking (β = 0.152, p < 0.001), but on the other
hand, also positively related to Cyber-Dystopian (β  = 0.084, p < 0.05), which
means they have a positive attitude toward robots since they like them more but
they also show higher concerns about the negative consequences in the use of
robots by human beings.
To explore the second research question, hierarchical multivariate OLS regres-
sions were run with the three factors constructed for occupations for robots as
dependent variables, and the constructed factors for attitudes toward robots as
independent variables. Not surprisingly, occupations related to social companion
were positively associated with Robot-Liking, human-likeness, and avatar engage-
ment. Occupations relating to surveillance were positively associated with Robot-
Liking, negatively associated with robotphobia, and positively associated with
Cyber-Dystopian.
This study reinforced many of the findings from the first study. Willingness to
accept robots was not about the exposure to particular types of robots so much
as recognition of human-like qualities of robots. This positive relationship can be
explained through the concept of social presence, which is the sense that another
intelligent being coexists and interacts with the user in the same environment
(Biocca 1997). Research has shown that users’ attitudes, evaluations, and social
responses toward robots are mediated by their feelings of social presence dur-
ing their interaction with robots (Lee et al. 2006). Respondents who are highly
familiar with ICT and spend a lot of time engaging with these technologies were
also more likely to fall into the Cyber-Dystopian camp while users who spent
more time engaging with avatars were more likely to fall into the Robot-Liking
camp. Adherents of Judeo-Christian traditions were also negatively correlated
with Robot-Liking. And gender enculturation seems to play a significant role in
acceptance.
The study also tested attitudes toward robots fulfilling certain occupations
in society. It found that individuals who like robots prefer them to do activities
related to social companionship and surveillance functions. But they interestingly
did not have a significant preference for them as personal assistants. These find-
ings support that of Goetz et al. (2003) which found that people systematically
preferred robots for jobs when the robot’s human-likeness matched the sociabil-
ity required for those jobs. They also found that individuals felt robotic assistants
needed to exhibit naturalistic behaviors and appropriate emotions with little to
no learning effort on the user’s end. Neither of these characteristics and features
was embedded in the robots presented in our study, so it is possible to argue that
more realistically designed robots would have elicited from participants stronger
preferences to use them as personal assistants. Respondents with Robotphobia
not surprisingly showed lower preferences for robots fulfilling any of the occupa-
tions. But those with a Cyber-Dystopian attitude did prefer robots for surveillance.
34 J.E. Katz et al.

This may be due to a few reasons. Perhaps they perceive this dystopian threat as
coming from without and robot surveillance would help protect them. Or they
may believe that when retained in a security capacity the robots are more likely
to remain under human control. Conversely, their view of a dystopian future may
map onto the numerous science fiction presentations of a world where every aspect
of our lives are recorded and robot surveillance is simply a potential they accept.

3.4 Conclusion

Earlier, we identified three factors that were important for considering social out-
comes of HRI—anthropomorphism of the robot, frequent meaningful communica-
tive events over CMC with humans some of whom users have never met in person,
and the increasing ways that nonhuman interactions mediate the everyday—
along with a few cultural aspects such as religion, gender, and social attitudes.
The two studies touched on some of these points and it is worth considering how
they might inform future studies. Both studies found that anthropomorphism of
robots did effect how people responded to them, with more human-looking robots
being attributed as having more human-likeness. However, they also revealed that
willingness to accept robots was more complex than simply how those robots
appeared. Different experiential and sociocultural factors predisposed people to
accepting them. Rather surprisingly, higher exposure to ICT can elicit a dystopian
attitude toward robots. Perhaps the mediation of nonhuman actors in our every-
day lives can create a negative effect. But using certain kinds of avatars increased
acceptance suggesting that meaningful communicative events over CMC might
positively impact acceptance. Gender also played a role in that women were less
likely to accept robots in their social and work environments. Lastly, religion and
religiosity proved to be a factor supporting the idea that Judeo-Christian traditions
do not allow space for robots as social beings.
This research also highlights areas that need more attention in academic stud-
ies of robot human interactions. Clearly cultural factors are very important but our
study was only able to examine undergraduates in a particular American context.
Future research should explore how other cultural groups conceive of and respond
to robots, which would serve two important purposes. First, as industry increas-
ingly seeks to incorporate robots into our everyday lives and governments seek to
develop policies regarding this it is vital that we understand not all societies will
respond in the same ways. In the European Union, for example, there are a mul-
titude of unique and thriving cultures that each approaches the world through dif-
ferent perspectives. Therefore a “copy-paste” tactic may not be effective. Instead,
research on local concepts and attitudes should inform the design, programmed
responses, and interactive styles of the robots as well as the accompanying policies
regarding robots will need to adjust to these local realities. Second, cross-cultural
studies provide a way for us to see which aspects might not be cultural. In other
words, if there are constants across a wide variety of cultures we may be able to
3  In the Company of Robots: Views of Acceptability of Robots … 35

isolate factors that are common to all humans and would allow us to hypothesize
about biological and evolutionary origins of attitudes and responses. However, in
order to confidently make any such claim numerous rigorous and wide ranging
cross-cultural studies would need to be conducted.
Likewise, the role of gender and religion merit further exploration. Gender
socialization varies widely across cultures so that the divide between young
women and men in America may not necessarily characterize the situation in
other contexts. For example, Sweden’s commitment to gender equality and reduc-
ing the gender gap economically and educationally may also greatly reduce the
gender gap in attitudes toward HRI (and research in that country would possibly
shed light as well on the questions raised in the preceding paragraph). Regarding
religion, previous research including our own only looked at Judeo-Christian,
Shinto, and Buddhist traditions, by-passing other major religions such as Islam
and Hinduism. It is also important to note that within these larger categories are
numerous denominations and sects, which may approach these topics differently.
For example, scholarship suggests that the soul status of nonhumans has long
been a debate within Christianity and that even if religious institutions issue edicts
regarding the issue practitioners may view the topic differently (Preece and Fraser
2000). A deeper exploration of the role of religion and religiosity in robot accept-
ance and attitudes would therefore be worthwhile.
Another useful line of inquiry is the appearance of the robot and the type of
task it is programmed to complete. There are cultural concepts of how particular
types of people and bodies are better or worse suited for tasks. For example, a
robot tasked with lifting heavy objects might be expected to appear squatter. A
gracile robot might strike observers as inappropriate for the task even if it was per-
fectly able to complete the required undertakings. (Certainly there is a substantial
body of literature demonstrating the importance of appearance when humans con-
sider other humans for a variety of tasks.). There may also be physical expecta-
tions that differ between robots who engage in a more social manner and those
engaging in undesirable tasks. The other side of this aspect is that robot creators
should be sensitive to these cultural concepts as it might relate to delicate mat-
ters such as race, class, and caste. Biases and histories of inequality of particu-
lar demographic groups often include stereotypes about appearance. If a robot is
programmed to perform a particular task that is associated with a marginalized
group, then a culturally sensitive approach should be employed when considering
physical design as well as other dimensions such as interaction patterns, voice, and
color.
Forms of technologically mediated interactions also deserve further investiga-
tion. Our research suggests that previous use of avatars might impact how willing
people are to accept robots but we did not separate out particular types of avatars
aside from Second Life. Video games routinely provide ways for players to design
avatars to their liking and then interact with programmed characters and the ava-
tars of other users. Yet, not all video games place heavy emphasis on emotional
and moral character development or social interactions with avatars. First person
shooting games, for example, often have online components where users play
36 J.E. Katz et al.

with and against avatars of other human users. These formats have historically
not provided interaction contexts that foster development of meaningful conversa-
tions and emotional attachment. Teams can be randomly assigned, the game can
be heavily competitive, and users can always respawn to play again. But this has
changed in recent years, in part because of growing bandwidth and availability of
hardware, a trend that further reinforces the idea that people like social situations
and interacts with humans and human-like entities. Other types of virtual games,
often story driven, include programmed characters that can interact with the
human users in a variety of ways and elicit emotional attachments despite users’
knowledge that they are fictional nonhumans. The degree that a game encourages
emotional investment in characters and avatars could be an important factor for
how users later think about engaging with nonhuman actors like robots.
Lastly, though this research was not specifically examining the uncanny valley
it does suggest that its impact may not remain as powerful as it is currently. This
phenomenon might not be due to a fault in the concept of the uncanny valley so
much as a testament to how plastic humans can be when adjusting to new realities.
In 1897, when Edison showed a grainy, silent, black, and white film of an on-rush-
ing train, called the Black Diamond Express, it elicited such fear from audience
members that they bolted from the auditorium. The so-called “train effect” where
audiences panicked when presented with film of approaching vehicles occurred
repeatedly during that era in Europe, Shanghai, and America. Viewers responded
by flinching, wincing, yelping, and even running away (Bottomore 1999). This
was not an irrational response but merely the equivalent of the uncanny valley of
their time. Actually, people can overcome these discomforts rather quickly and
adjust to the new normal. We as a species can adapt quite rapidly to changing
cultural contexts and visual media so that even if robots are initially too like us
for comfort, most of the population may be able to normalize and adjust rather
swiftly. Therefore, initial experimental responses regarding both the uncanny val-
ley and anthropomorphism in general might not indicate future attitudes. A lon-
gitudinal study could explore whether cultural groups can adjust to particular
appearances and interaction formats successfully and whether they would grow to
accept robots in their social and work environments.

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Chapter 4
Perception, Acceptance, and the Social
Construction of Robots—Exploratory
Studies

Joachim R. Höflich and Afifa El Bayed

In order to investigate social robots’ images and approval and/or rejection, we

­conducted two pre-studies and two studies combining qualitative and q­ uantitative
methods. In the first pre-study, we attempted to capture the images of robots in
our minds as indicators of their social representation. The second pre-study tried
to contrast the acceptance of robots in general among non-experienced users with
their acceptance of specific robotic instances. In the first study, we aimed to quanti-
tatively shed light on the relationship between the acceptance of robots. The users’
demographics and their earlier robotic experience on one hand, and the robots’ func-
tionalities, interactional capacities, and physical appearance on the other. Finally,
in the last study, we aimed to track the shift from a dyadic to a triadic relationship
with a robot by observing the interaction between pairs of participants and a robot
in an experimental setting. Our four studies provide support for previous academic
­findings, but also question others opening up the floor for novel research horizons.

4.1 Introduction: Robots as Unknown Entities

and as Pictures in Our Minds

For many years, the computer has been considered the basal medium of modern
societies. Nowadays, as a recent Pew Research Center (2014) study underlines,
a change is in progress that replaces computers with robots. Indeed, the majority

J.R. Höflich · A. El Bayed (*) 

University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany
e-mail: a.el_bayed@uni-erfurt.de
J.R. Höflich
e-mail: j.hoeflich@uni-erfurt.de

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 39

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_4
40 J.R. Höflich and A. El Bayed

of the respondents declared that artificial intelligence in general, and particularly

robots, will determine a large part of life in the year 2025 “with huge implications
for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics, customer ser-
vice, and home maintenance”. Although everyone knows ‘robot’ as a term, only
few have concrete experiences with one. Based on data gathered from citizens
of the European Union (European Commission 2012, p. 14), 87 % of Europeans
declared that they have never used a robot in their lives, neither at work nor at
home (including robotic vacuum cleaners). In this sense, the experience with
robots remains for many as a myth presented by science fiction literature and
films, instead of being a self-experienced encounter. Hence, fears of witnessing
such machines becoming virulent exist and persist (cf. Neilsen 2011).
Fear is a barrier regarding the acceptance of robots and measuring the mental
states of users and non-users of robots drives research, especially that which explores
attitudes toward robots using “Negative Attitudes toward Robots Scale” (NARS)
(Nomura et al. 2006a, b, c; Tsui et al. 2011; Syrdal et al. 2009). Attitudes are a kind
of substitute for behavior; a pre-behavior associated with the idea to predict (and also
change) behavior. Based on a dyadic perspective of a human–robot interaction and
an atomistic perspective, as Moscovici (2002, p. 234) indicates, “social psychologists
studying attitudes are not really interested in people’s knowledge in their symbolic
world.” Following Moscovici, to acquire an attitude towards an object means to have
a representation, which is part of a culture of folk knowledge and of cognition. Social
representations do not substitute or oppose attitudes, but rather they are part of them.
These social representations are ‘social’ as far as they are based on communication.
In this sense, the perception and acceptance of robots are based on attitudes that are
part of representations that are constituted by communication. In other words, robots
as well as media are social constructions in a process of social incorporation—a pro-
cess, that indicates that the robots are not social in nature, but rather gain their socia-
bility thanks to processes of social appropriation. This makes robots a ‘robotic other’
that is part of a triangular conception of representation, where Person A and Person B
relate to the robot and include it or exclude it from their interaction.
This chapter presents exploratory studies reflecting the idea of the social
­representation of robots, where robots are seen as media, socially constructed by
communication and socially embedded. The paper ends with some conclusions
regarding further fields of research.

4.2 Pre-study 1: The Perception of Robots;

Their Pictures in Our Minds

The picture of robots many have is limited to their imagination and in this pre-study
we aimed to discover what these social representations of robots look like, and
whether these perceptions comply with the marketed ones. Since April 2011 we
have been collecting drawings of robots in order to capture our participants’ men-
tal images and to reveal their perceptions of them. The (ongoing) sample includes
4  Perception, Acceptance, and the Social Construction … 41

Fig. 4.1  Imaginations of robots

students of both genders, enrolled in different humanities and social sciences

­programs at the University of Erfurt, with an age varying between 18 and 25 years.
This exploratory trial is based on the idea that “Representation = image/mean-
ing, that it equates every image to an idea and every idea to an image” (Moscovici
2002, p. 31). This is associated with the premise that the images of robots in our
minds can be to some extent reflected and made visible in drawings of robots.
Accordingly, the students participating in this study were given the instruction,
without additional guidance, to draw a robot.
Figure 4.1 shows a few of the many drawings by our participants which demon-
strated the following characteristics:
• Robots were frequently shown as they appear in book illustrations, following
the typical cube-model pattern. This actually connects robots in our minds to
the antiquated image of robots which is not found or followed in the contem-
porary robots of today. In the same spirit, the drawn robots do not differ from
those sketched by children over 35 years ago (see Reichardt 1978, p. 100).
• Robots often appear to rather resemble men (masculine robot model), while…
• … female robots appear gender-stereotyped.
• Male robots are often associated with dominance attributes, if not with some
potential for violence.
• Interestingly, a lot (although not the majority) sketched an on–off button for the
robot. This highlights the wish to keep control over the robot when needed, so
that their movement and activities can be limited.
Taking into consideration these findings, it is clear that our study was able to show
that persons with limited or no knowledge about robots have a perception about
them that is based on their imagination. It also underlined that the imagined robots
remain caricatured in nature and rather science-fiction-movie-character-like, and
do not resemble those developed in laboratories, or that are marketed (e.g., Aibo
as a zoomorphic robot, Kismet as a functionally designed robot). The participants’
perceptions about robots remain mainly fictional in nature and incompatible with
42 J.R. Höflich and A. El Bayed

reality. All this in an age when robotics is an increasingly flourishing discipline,

and when robots are increasingly encouraged to become socially incorporated.

4.3 Pre-study 2: The Acceptance of Robots;

Those We Know and Those We Imagine

In this second pre-study, we decided to go a step further with the aim of unearth-
ing the general acceptance of robots as imagined and perceived before exposure to
real instances of existing robots. Hence, in September 2014 we ran a further quali-
tative study, which took the form of a problem-centered qualitative interview. The
26 persons sampled had either no prior experience with robots or a limited one.
They were students of both genders (n (Male) = 13; n (Female) = 13), belonging
to different humanities and social sciences undergraduate and graduate programs
at the University of Erfurt. Some also occasionally work part-time, and others
attend training programs.
In this pre-study, the participants were asked about their acceptance of robots
in general as well as about their incorporation in society, before being asked to
answer open-ended questions about their acceptance of robots holding different
social roles in various social contexts (e.g., housekeepers, nursing assistants in
hospitals, mine extractors in the field of war). After being asked about robots in
general, and about robots performing specific tasks, they were then exposed to real
instances of robots and were asked about their acceptance.
The results of this second pre-study revealed interestingly that our respondents—
even with their lack of experience with robots—were ready to accept social robots
in general. Still, they accepted some more than others in specific environments. Our
participants were open to the introduction of robots in contexts where their inclusion
brings a benefit—an added value. They even welcomed their replacement of humans
in some specific tasks and duties (e.g., repetitive tasks to avoid human boredom,
missions in dangerous fields to guarantee human safety). On the other hand, robots
were rejected in cases where human beings proved to be more competent. In other
words, it is generally believed that humans are more qualified than robots in certain
contexts, for example medical care, and so should remain. When it came to robotic
performances involving interaction with human counterparts, these were generally
underestimated and looked down upon such as in this example for a male respond-
ent, “I find that a robot should not be used in areas where it depends on the interper-
sonal interaction.” This statement, being declared by a teacher, goes hand in hand
with previous findings indicating the fear of robots taking people’s jobs.
The second part of the results, which concerns the responses of the participants
regarding the specific robots to which they were exposed, noted the increase in
the openness of the participants; in fact they were more accepting of the concrete
instances of the robots they were confronted with. For instance, they were more
tolerant to RI-MAN (a robot designed for medical assistance) than they were to
4  Perception, Acceptance, and the Social Construction … 43

medical care robots in general. However, we noted that the level of acceptance
dropped as the participants were evaluating robots that were very physically
­similar to human beings.
The findings of pre-studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that our participants, who
lacked knowledge and earlier experience with robots relying mainly on their imagi-
nation, generally accepted robots including into their social life. But when given the
chance to think about the main aspects the robots might deal with and the tasks they
should fulfill, people started giving privilege to humans and underestimated potential
robotic performance in tasks that are or they felt should be kept human in nature.
This highlights the mental line that persons draw between what is human (e.g., medi-
cal care, teaching) and what should become robotic (e.g., mine searching, mechanical
assembly). This simply underlines the fear of some kind of robotic control (a classi-
cal science fiction scenario) that might cause human uselessness or simply increase
unemployment (European Commission 2012, p. 149).
However, when confronted with real instances of robots, our participants
showed more flexibility and acceptance of robots, even in fields where they
believed that robots would be rather useless (e.g., medical care). This sheds light
on the shift in perception that acceptance of robots undergoes when knowledge
about them increases. It is important to note that with respect to the physical
appearance of the selected robots, our participants’ acceptance of robots increased
as their appearance became more human-like, before it radically dropped as their
resemblance became very human-like. This finding supports Mori’s uncanny
­valley hypothesis (1970, 2012), which attests that the increase in physical resem-
blance of robots to humans engenders an increase in their acceptance until they
become so human-like it causes a drop in acceptance or even rejection.

4.4 Study 1: The Perception and Acceptance

of Robots—A Survey

In the light of the results of our two pre-studies, we conceived a quantitative

study that aimed to capture the perception and acceptance of robots by persons
with limited or no knowledge about them, and by those who have earlier experi-
ence with the robots, to find out the difference between these, if any. Hence, we
sampled between 2011 and 2014 a number of persons (n = 130), of whom there
were slightly fewer men than women, comprising: high school students (14.6 %),
college students (35.4 %), employees (31.5 %), independently working (6.9 %),
retired (7.7 %), and unemployed persons (3.9 %).
The survey was conducted online and paper-based copies were also used by
some for convenience. The survey questionnaire was designed to address the
44 J.R. Höflich and A. El Bayed

Fig. 4.2  Robots used in our questionnaire

following research questions based on the results of our pre-studies and supported
by earlier research in the field (Reeves and Nass 1996).
RQ1 What is the relationship between the previous contact with robots and
their acceptance?
RQ2 What is the relationship between the complexity of a robot’s functionali-
ties and its acceptance?
RQ3a What is the relationship between the interactional similarity of a robot
with human beings and its acceptance?
RQ3b What is the relationship between the physical similarity of a robot with
human beings and its acceptance?
RQ4a What is the relationship between a person’s age and the acceptance of
robots?
RQ4b What is the relationship between a person’s gender and the acceptance of
robots?
RQ4c What is the relationship between a person’s educational level and the
acceptance of robots?
We designed our questionnaire in five blocks. The first block was self-redacted
and asked the respondents about their earlier experience with robots as well as the
field of operation of the latter (e.g., industry, robot toys, home assistants, museum
tour guides). Then, they were asked to evaluate their acceptance of robots using a
five point Likert scale according to the robots’ trustworthiness, helpfulness, enter-
taining, simplicity, and pleasance. This first cluster of questions enabled address-
ing our first research question RQ1.
Question blocks two, three, and four were similar but referred to different
robots. In each block, the respondents were shown a picture of a specific robot
(see robots a, b, and c in Fig. 4.2), and were asked to estimate their acceptance
4  Perception, Acceptance, and the Social Construction … 45

Table 4.1  Independent samples t-test comparisons of means for items evaluating HRI by

­persons with or without experience with robots
Trustworthiness Helpfulness Pleasance Entertainment
n M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD)
People with earlier 66 3.98 (0.75) 3.26 (0.80) 4.45 (0.50) 3.32 (0.84)
experience with robots
People without earlier 64 2.08 (0.80) 2.95 (0.68) 2.38 (0.52) 2.95 (0.68)
experience with robots
t-test – 13.96*** 2.35* 23.22*** 2.71**
***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05

of the robot in different aspects and contexts of social life (e.g. medical clinic,
­garden, neighbors house, bedroom) using a five-point Likert scale.
The second block of questions addressed Robot ‘a’ as a representative exam-
ple of mechanical robots. The third addressed Robot ‘b’ as an instance of social-
interfaced robots and the fourth asked questions about a humanoid robot Robot
‘c’. As one considers the robots ‘a’, ‘b’, and ‘c’ respectively, one notices that the
complexity of their functionalities and their interactional and physical similarity
with humans increases. These four blocks of questions thus address our research
questions RQ2, RQ3a, and RQ3b.
Finally, the fifth block asked the participants about their demographics such as their
gender, age, and educational level. Combined with the indicators on the acceptance of
robots presented above, they addressed research questions RQ4a, RQ4b, and RQ4c.
Coming to the results of our study, we succeeded to sample persons among
which around 50 % had earlier experience with robots in the form of robot-toys
(48 persons), industrial robots (41), robots exposed in museums (34), in the work-
place (23), in commerce (18), and home assistants (22). This quota particularly
addressed RQ1, which explored the relationship between previous contact with
robots and their acceptance. As our results in Table 4.1 show persons with earlier
robot experience positively described them as being trustworthy, helpful, pleasant,
and entertaining when compared with persons with no previous robotic experience.
In research question RQ2, we asked about the relationship between the complexity
of the robots functionalities and their acceptance. And in RQ3a and RQ3b, respec-
tively, we aimed to examine the relationship between the interactional and physi-
cal similarity of robots with humans and their acceptance. The results showed that
the more complex the functionalities of a robot were and the more interaction and
physically human-like it was, the less accepted it was (see Table 4.2). In our compu-
tations, the acceptance of a robot was considered to be the sum of its acceptance in
Table 4.2  Comparisons of Acceptance
the means for the acceptance
n M (SD)
of the robots a, b, and c
Mechanical robot ‘a’ 129 4.05 (0.82)
Social-interfaced robot ‘b’ 128 2.59 (0.98)
Humanoid robot ‘c’ 129 1.59 (0.72)
F(2, 383) = 292.70, p = 0.000
46 J.R. Höflich and A. El Bayed

the different social life aspects as evaluated by our participants divided by the total
number of items. After attaining a significant between-group means comparison of
the acceptance of the robots (p < 0.001), a Tukey post-hoc test was run to demonstrate
the significance in the decline of acceptance as the robot’s similarity with humans in
terms of complexity, interaction, and physical appearance increases (Robot a’s accept-
ance * (p < 0.05) > Robot b’s acceptance * (p < 0.05) > Robot c’s acceptance).
Research questions RQ4a, RQ4b, and RQ4c tried to capture the relationship
between the demographics of the participants in terms of gender, age, as well as
educational level and their acceptance of robots. Our results showed that in gen-
eral (but not significantly) men accepted robots more than women; younger people
demonstrated more acceptance toward robots than older ones, and more educated
persons were more robot accepting than less educated ones.
In sum, our results compare favorably with conclusions previously reached by
several Human-Robot Interaction scholars. Earlier research in the field supports
the idea that user-friendliness (Isbister and Nass 2000), simplicity (Norman 1988)
and consistency (Winograd 1996) of robotic platforms increases their accept-
ance (Isbister and Nass 2000), as opposed to their complexity which causes its
decrease. Similarly, earlier experience with robots is believed to increase their
acceptance (Reeves and Nass 1996), a finding we reached in the present study, as
well as in our second pre-study.
On the other hand, some of our results do not necessarily align with former find-
ings in the field. Although it is believed that human beings prefer, and even con-
tinuously seek, interaction with similarly communicating counterparts (Reeves
and Nass 1996), our study found that the more the robotic counterpart was inter-
actionally similar, the less it was accepted. Coming to the physical aspect of the
robot and its impact on the interaction, the mostly supported hypothesis in the field
remains the uncanny valley by Mori (1970, 2012). In our studies the acceptance of
the robots decreased whenever their physical resemblance with humans increased,
showing a categorical disfavoring of anthropomorphism, of which many scholars
including Duffy (2003), Ray and Siegwart (2008), and Turkle (2011) argue in favor.
Indeed, it seems that our participants tended to reject robots whenever they increas-
ingly resembled them, underlining hence a form of fear of the robotic other. This
fear, that is described by Mori (1970, 2012) and which he believed should appear
only in further stages of human-likeness, showed up in our case at an earlier stage,
emphasizing consequently the difference in the way humans perceive robots as
the intensity of experience with them varies across cultures (in the current case,
German participants versus Japanese robots). This might also be the reason why
the demographics did not appear to be a factor in the acceptance of robots in any
remarkable way, since our sample includes persons (even those with earlier experi-
ences with robots) who equally never experienced living in a setting where robots
were socially imbedded, so that their gender, generational or even educational levels
come into play. In fact, Nass and Moon (2000) remind that situational factors also
may influences acceptance. This encouraged us to pursue a second study in a differ-
ent context that placed two persons with a social robot in an experimental setting.
4  Perception, Acceptance, and the Social Construction … 47

4.5 Study Two: The Social Construction of Robotic Others

When people engage in a relationship with a robot, they engage in a dyadic relation-
ship on an ‘as-if’ basis of imagination; as if the robot was a social being. The starting
idea is that robots become social robots when they are socially embedded and incor-
porated. In this case, the robot should not only be in a situation whereby it stands face
to face with a person (and being hence regarded as a social being), but should rather
be considered as a building block of a social fabric; a social context. In this case, the
robot cannot be perceived anymore as an object, but rather as an interlocutor, and not
as a third object, but as a third person who can at every moment integrate the com-
munication structure (Höflich 2013). One can also speak about a ‘robotic third’, or in
the words of Kahn et al. (2004, p. 546) about a ‘robotic other’. With this term, Kahn
et al. (2004, p. 546) try to go beyond the ontological definition of a social robot to
point more to how people can designate a robot from a social perspective. Following
this idea, one may also refer to the German sociologist Georg Simmel (1995) and his
conception of the third member. The third indicates an extension of a dyadic relation
towards the social/sociological dimension and the emergence of a structure. Looking
at triadic relationships associated with a third is the possibility of incorporation as
well as of exclusion. In this sense, a robot could be an integral part of the triad or it
could be excluded, to be considered as an external artifact.
The others in interaction must be classified—and consequently the way in
which they transform an object to a constructed quasi-subject must be traced. The
starting point is the imagination of objects as social objects. This has to do with
the core idea of symbolic interactionism. With this respect, Herbert Blumer (1986,
p. 11) points out that objects do not carry meaning in themselves, they rather
acquire it in a (continuous) process of mutual displaying. Hence, they become
­necessarily meaningful objects.
In this process of social interaction, social representation emerges. This underlines
that humans are not “lonely cognizers” (Wagner and Hayes 2005, p. 119), rather the
relation of a person to an object (in this case; to a robot) is defined and mediated by
his or her relations to others. However, this object has a particularity, which is that it
can be (more or less autonomously) interactive. It reacts to our actions and we react
to the one it emits. Seen this way, robots can be considered as ‘interactive media’
(Zhao 2006), with which we interact and that constitute communicative bridges,
when it reads email, or as in the case of Paro (a seal robot used for elderly care)
when it stimulates communication among patients suffering from dementia.
This second case study takes rather the form of an experimental arrangement
embracing methods such as think aloud, observation and a survey. Although the
current results are at a preliminary status, they already introduce important find-
ings that open up a fundamental discussion regarding the current perception of
robots and its potential changes. The current observational study permitted the
occurrence of an experimental triadic arrangement, with two individuals and a
robot, that focused on and looked into the details of the communicative embed-
ding (and by the same occasion the inclusion) of a robot. Due to limited financial
48 J.R. Höflich and A. El Bayed

support, we opted for an affordable robot, which still had the necessary features
for our experiment. This toy robot is Robosapien (toy of the year 2004). Produced
by WowWee and developed by the NASA-physicist Mark Tilden, the robot is
­promoted as follows:
Robosapien is a sophisticated fusion of technology and personality. Loaded with attitude
and intelligence, …, Robosapien is more than a mechanical companion—he’s a multi-
functional, thinking, feeling robot with attitude! (http://wowwee.com).

The participants received written instructions beforehand and were asked to teach
the robot how to fulfill tasks such as walking without encountering obstacles and
raising an object with its hand (modeled to enable gripping).
In each experimental event, two persons were involved, totalling eight pairs
(4 male, 4 female), all students of the University of Erfurt. Each couple was
instructed to articulate their thoughts out loud during the experiment, in order to
capture their thoughts and perceptions. The discussions involving our participants
were recorded, transcribed, and content analyzed and a semi-structured interview
was conducted and recorded with participants. Figure 4.3 below gives a general
impression of the experiment.
The idea behind the experiment was to grasp the ‘social’ in the robot—as a
social construct—based on the descriptions, which emerged during the discussions
and that designated the robot as a member of the social setting. In this case, the
robot is considered as a part in a triad, following the taxonomy of human-robot
interaction as proposed by Yanco and Drury (2002). They examined relationships
between one or two persons and/or robots demonstrating how the relationships
vary as the persons intervene as single instances in the interaction with the one
or many robots, or when they intervene as a group with the one or many robots.
These two constellations proved to be relevant to our experiment, especially as the
conversation of our paired subjects continuously shifted from a direct interaction

Fig. 4.3  Instance of the
experiment with Robosapien
4  Perception, Acceptance, and the Social Construction … 49

with the robot (inclusion) to an interpersonal communication showing distance to

the robot (exclusion).
Robosapien was not referred to as research object, not a robot, by our labora-
tory supervisors. This was to avoid any influence or bias of our respondents’ per-
ceptions, but as soon as the pre-briefing started the assignment of specific names
occurred. The robot was referred to with respect to characters in movies like
C-3PO (known from the Star Wars movie). Nicknames such as “Robbi-Bobbi”,
“Robbi”, “Bunny” or even “Schatzi” (German word equivalent to ‘my little treas-
ure’) were used; also, neutral references like “object”. Using names, nicknames
or natural references is a proof of the need to provide the robot—the initially
presented plain object—with a name. By naming the object, the foundation for a
personal reference is set. Giving a name indicates an anchor for social representa-
tions, “to set them in a familiar context” (Moscovici 2002).
However, one should not forget that Robosapien was also perceived as a toy,
because it is one and reactions to it were provided using human attributions and
characteristics. The robot was thought to be funny when ‘he’ belched. He was
also described to be ‘outrageous’ when he did not respond to an arrangement. He
was seen in some instances as being shy. Although the robot has a gripping arm,
this was referred to as a hand, and the red lightening bulbs in his head were des-
ignated as eyes. He was depicted as evil, as dangerous. When facing fear of the
robot, insecurity was immediately triggered, causing a direct interaction with the
research object. We noted sentences like: “Just go and get away from me!” One of
the respondent showed fear ‘for’ the robot and asked: “What is hurting you now?”
When the robot was in a standby mode, one declared: “Now he sleeps. We have to
turn it off. He was bothered enough. He cannot afford more”. Although the experi-
mental situation did not last more than 30 min, this limited amount of time was
enough to highlight how quickly quasi-interpersonal relationships between persons
and robotic others can be produced. It seems that we end up using our familiar
communication lexicon when dealing with robots (see also Reeves and Nass 1996).
Studies such as our own in laboratory conditions underline that the social
incorporation and embedding of a robot transforms it to an ‘other’—and that this
robotic other or third is produced and constructed in a process of social interac-
tion. In our case, as noted earlier, the respondents were clearly in an artificial set-
ting and were shortly confronted with the robot. Studies performed under real life
conditions and over time can provide further insights on the social incorporation
and acceptance of robots and their prospects, such as experiments run in a quasi-
natural setting, mainly in a reproduced home environment. However, this research
and its scope remains limited and is still in its early stages (see Fernaeus et al.
2010, Forlizzi 2007, Fridin et al. 2011, Leite et al. 2013).
50 J.R. Höflich and A. El Bayed

4.6 Concluding Remarks: Social Incorporation

and Change in the Perception of Robots

The studies were conducted to examine the perception and acceptance in the
context of the social representation of robots. Our research started with the
­
idea of images of robots that give a first insight and allow one to grasp social
representations. Not least, it was shown that these representations change
­
­depending on one’s experience with robots, that these representations are based
on communication, and finally that communication as a mutual indication is
­constitutive of a medium in general and of a robot more specifically. This makes a
robot a meaningful object and finally a social robot.
When something becomes as a part of our everyday life and familiar to us, then
the image we attribute to it changes. The mere presence of robots can lead to the
establishment of such a familiarity. Whether robots are known through movies or
are a major building block of one’s own environment and everyday encounters
makes a difference. One example is the natural experiment in Peccioli, a small city
with 5,000 inhabitants in Toscana. In that context, people everyday come across
robots and must react to them—even if the robots initially perform easy and lim-
ited tasks such as waste disposal. In Peccioli people’s perception of and expec-
tations from robots change as they are exposed to them in real-life conditions.
Future developments will offer further opportunities for research of how robots
become socially incorporated and meaningful. For instance, it could be interesting
to see how people react to family robots such as Jibo, which is being developed
by Cynthia Breazeal, whose name and earlier work are rather bound to the robot
Kismet (2002, 2003). Jibo will be a considerable benefit to the current research to
examine how a robot like this will be accepted or domesticated in a familial social
environment. This will permit not only the investigation about individual accept-
ance of robots but also about their social acceptance. Furthermore, and finally, this
will show robots are not prefabricated machines, but rather they are ‘made’ and
‘re-invented’ based on what people do with them.

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 Part II
Human Interaction with Social Robots
Chapter 5
Social Robotics in Health-Care Service:
The Case of Rehabilitation Programmes
in Hong Kong

Pui-lam Law

This chapter deals with the use of assistive technologies in rehabilitation programmes,
particularly the physically disabled in Hong Kong. The chapter argues that if the
assistive technologies can only restore the biological and physical functioning of the
disabled, they remain a robot only. When these technologies also manage to improve
the social life of the disabled, they can turn into social robots. Following this line
of thought, the chapter argues that rehabilitation programmes facilitating the use of
assistive technologies in Hong Kong have difficulties in transforming assistive tech-
nologies into social robots. The chapter is concluded by further elaborating these dif-
ficulties at both the micro- and macro-level.

5.1 Introduction

This chapter critically discusses the use of assistive technologies in rehabilitation

programmes in Hong Kong. The particular focus of the chapter is on physically
disabled people and on the rehabilitation programmes targeted at this group. The
chapter is premised on the idea that assistive technologies prescribed to a reha-
bilitation patient are kinds of robotic devices as they serve the purpose of restoring
the physical and biological functioning of the disabled patient. To become social
robots, they should also manage to serve the social functioning of the disabled
patient by improving their day to day social life.

P. Law (*) 
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
e-mail: patrick.law@polyu.edu.hk

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 55

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_5
56 P. Law

Following this line of thought, the chapter analyses the rehabilitation pro-
grammes that prescribe assistive technologies for disabled people in Hong Kong.
The aim is to identify some key obstacles to turning these assistive technologies
into social robots. First, the chapter briefly introduces recent rehabilitation pro-
gramme development in Hong Kong. Second, using wheelchairs as an example,
the chapter delineates the problem of turning the wheelchair into a social robot at
both the micro- and macro-level. The chapter concludes by arguing that turning an
assistive technology into a social robot requires communication between the social
and the technological.
The chapter data are based primarily on participant observation of wheelchair
users and the interviews of professors of biomedical engineering and a frontline
worker working with the disabled.1 The professors have been teaching in rehabili-
tation programmes, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, for years. In
addition, they are also well-experienced engineers in designing and inventing
assistive technologies for disabled patients. The frontline worker has been working
with rehabilitative patients for many years. The framework of the interviews
focuses on the assimilation of the technological into the social aspect. Detailed
questions are, for instance, on evaluating the needs of patients, the prescription
and design of the technologies, and structure of rehabilitation in integrating the
technological with the biological and the social. While the interviews reflect the
professional perspective, participant observation supplements the user perspective.

5.2 A Brief Introduction to Rehabilitation Programmes

in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a very advanced modern city in terms of its well-developed medi-
cal service and well-rounded rehabilitation programmes. In the early 1970s, Hong
Kong had already started developing the notion of integrating patients with various
kinds of disabilities into the community (HKSAR 1977). Since then, rehabilita-
tion services have been growing rapidly. For instance, rehabs, day centres, halfway
houses and vocational rehabilitation services were all in place to support rehab
patients returning to full social functioning.
Moving on to the 1990s, the Hong Kong government issued another white
paper on rehabilitation that has emphasised both the equal opportunities for the
disabled and a full integration of rehab patients into the community (HKSAR
1995). Thus, new policy on barrier-free access was introduced. For instance, all
public transportation should have barrier-free access facilities for the disabled with
wheelchairs.

1Thank you to Prof. Arthur FRT. Mac, Prof. Daniel O.K. Chow, Ir Dr. Eric O.K. Tam and
Mr. Ivan Su.
5  Social Robotics in Health-Care Service … 57

In the 2000s, the government introduced social enterprise. The r­ehabilitation

s­ ector can apply for funding from the government to set up social enterprise for rehab
patients. This scheme can therefore provide more employment or training opportu-
nities for rehab patients; this is central for development care, and ­self-support for
enabling these patients to return to the community.
In 2005, the Rehabilitation Advisory Committee conducted a major review on
the Hong Kong rehabilitation programme plan to make recommendations on reha-
bilitation services for future development in the following two strategic directions:
to promote cross-sectoral collaboration in providing barrier-free environment and diver-
sified services for persons with disabilities so as to facilitate their integration into the
community; and to empower persons with disabilities and their carers, so as to help them
become valuable social capital. (RAC 2007)

The review report provides a more comprehensive recommendation on future

rehabilitation services in namely: pre-school training, education, employment
and vocational rehabilitation, residential care, day care and community support,
access and transport, development of self-help organisations, application of infor-
mation and communications technologies and recreational and cultural activities.
Undoubtedly, according to this report (Rehabilitation Advisory Committee (RAC)
2007), rehabilitation services in general in Hong Kong have been improving sig-
nificantly for the past four decades. However, when we look into the rehabilita-
tion services, particularly the service using assistive devices or technologies for
persons with physical disabilities, we find that there is a very serious communica-
tion problem between the social and the technological aspects. This communica-
tion problem can be attributed to several factors, namely the indecisive meaning
of social needs, the market supply issue, and the fragmentation of healthcare ser-
vices. All these problems have contributed to obstructing the process of turning
assistive technologies into social robots.
In what follows, I shall use the wheelchair as an example to elaborate the com-
munication problem in greater detail.

5.3 Social Robotics and Assistive Technologies

in Rehabilitation Programmes

Those who need to have a prescription for a wheelchair have physical disabilities
concerning mobility such as a musculoskeletal or paraplegic problem, a neurologi-
cal issue that mainly affects the leg or the lower part of the body, or have injured
legs or broken bones in the lower part of the body. For this group of rehabilitation
patients, the wheelchair is designed to solve the human mobility problem—that is
moving from one place to another or obtaining something that is out of reach.
A wheelchair is indeed among the most basic assistive technologies in a reha-
bilitation programme. Most of the wheelchairs we see on the street are manually
propelled, that is either propelled by the occupant or pushed by someone. There
58 P. Law

are also powered wheelchairs that consist of an electric motor and a simple navi-
gation control system such as joysticks. Some are more advanced, which are con-
trolled by voice or thought (Simpson and Levine 2002; Rehsamen et al. 2007).
Although a wheelchair does not have any sensor or programmable interface
directly linking the cognitive function of the person with the mechanic function
of the chair itself, it can still be considered as a kind of simple and basic robot
(Miller 1998).
But can a wheelchair function as a social robot? In designing assistive technology
for a physically disabled patient, the engineer is simply concerned with whether the
wheelchair can restore the physical or biological functioning that the patient has lost.
Thus, for example, a prosthetic lower limb is designed by the biomedical engineer for
an amputee to restore the mobility function. But mobility is not only limited to physi-
cal functioning; it also has its social aspects. For instance, if the amputee is Japanese,
his way of sitting in a traditional Japanese restaurant would be completely different
from sitting in a non-Japanese restaurant. The Japanese person has to sit in a kneel-
ing form. The prosthetic lower limb designed for the Japanese person also has to take
care of the daily social functioning of the patient. Thus, if a wheelchair could only
solve physical or biological functions, then it remains a robot. But if it can perform
social functions as the social robot targets in everyday life, then it is a social robot
(Fortunati 2013). In a rehabilitation programme, if the patient is prescribed a wheel-
chair as an assistive technology to restore the social functioning of a disabled patient
that has lost his or her mobility function, then the wheelchair should also serve the
social function rather than merely the robotic function.
Cost-Benefit Model of Funding In a rehabilitation programme for a patient
with a mobility problem, understanding the social needs of the patient is essential
for the biomedical engineer in designing the wheelchair for the patient. In Hong
Kong, however, the biomedical engineer always encounters frustration when deal-
ing with the social aspect of designing the wheelchair for the rehabilitation prob-
lem. Communication is always the first problem they face.
In Hong Kong, a wheelchair can easily be bought in the market. But without
doubt, they are usually very simple in terms of design, and it may not fit the needs
of a particular patient. For instance, if the patient is socially active and likes to
go out frequently, then a lighter wheelchair would be more convenient for travel-
ling around. In addition, a lighter wheelchair can also minimise shoulder pain for
the patient if it is manually propelled. Inevitably, this type of wheelchair would be
more expensive than an ordinary one.
In Hong Kong, if a rehabilitation patient is not wealthy enough to get a lighter
wheelchair, they have to go to the medical social worker to apply for financial
support. Interestingly, the social worker always questions why the rehabilitation
patient needs to have an expensive lighter wheelchair even if the biomedical engi-
neer provides an explanation. Tied up by red tape, the amount of money that the
patient can get usually only covers half or less than half of the price of getting a
lighter wheelchair. If the socially active patient cannot obtain a wheelchair most
suited to them it will perhaps hinder his or her social needs. Most likely the heavy
5  Social Robotics in Health-Care Service … 59

wheelchair they have to buy will eventually be abandoned at home because it does
not meet the needs of the user.
The bureaucracy involved in obtaining a wheelchair suitable for social needs
reflects two issues here. The first is a money issue. In Hong Kong, the cost-benefit
model has influenced social service funding policies. The principle of measuring
whether a service is successful depends on the calculation of the balance between
the quantity of resource input and service output. According to this principle, giv-
ing full funding to a lighter wheelchair would of course violate the cost-benefit
model. The prescription of a powered wheelchair is an example of the problem
of a cost-benefit model. A well-experienced therapist can easily tell that a reha-
bilitation patient would definitely have shoulder problems after using a manual
wheelchair for years. Thus, for the long-term well-being of the patient, both the
biomedical engineer and the therapist would always believe that prescribing the
patient a powered wheelchair is much better than a manual one. The funding
application would of course be flatly rejected, as this is contrary to the cost-benefit
model. Obviously, the patient will then develop shoulder joint illness after using
the manual wheelchair for years.
The Funding Model Problem The second issue is the problem of communica-
tion between the social and the biomedical. When prescribing a wheelchair to a
patient, different patients of course have different social needs; therefore, the types
of wheelchairs prescribed would vary according to different patients. But the bio-
medical engineer finds that the medical social worker has never listened to their
description of the various biological and physical needs of the patient. Whatever
type of prescription, the medical social service would provide funding that can
only get the simplest and the most basic wheelchair model. This wheelchair exam-
ple reveals in general terms that the problem of communication between the social
and the biomedical has been conducive to the lack of a funding model for the pre-
scription of suitable assistive technologies for patients.
In view of the above issues, if the wheelchair is considered as a robotic exten-
sion of the patient, it is only a poorly performed robot, and not a social robot.
Social Needs Whether a wheelchair can work as a social robot to restore social
functioning of a rehabilitation patient always worries a biomedical engineer. What
a biomedical engineer can do is to design a wheelchair that meets the biological,
physical, and, to a very small degree, the social needs of a patient.
For instance, a wheelchair-bound patient having a sitting problem would most
likely subsequently have back pain illness. A biomedical engineer can design
a wheelchair that helps the patient to sit in an upright mode; but in order to solve
the sitting problem, it is usually the height of the seat that has to be increased.
Consequently, this would create an interaction problem of the patient with his or her
living environment: The height of the washbasin or the dining table may not fit the
height of the wheelchair; and furthermore, the change in the height of the wheelchair
will lead to a change in the way the health-care worker moves the patient. Thus, if
a wheelchair can become a social robot it should at least help the patient to interact
with the living environment efficiently, otherwise, it would likely be abandoned.
60 P. Law

In addition, if a wheelchair is to be a social robot, it should also be designed

to meet the patient’s social needs. Understanding the social needs of a patient fre-
quently presents difficulties for the biomedical engineer in Hong Kong. The bio-
medical engineer could visit the patient’s living environment but clearly a social
worker’s involvement is also necessary assist in linking needs with the design.
However, as aforementioned, the medical social work in Hong Kong does not
communicate with the biomedical engineer in developing a suitable funding
scheme for a wheelchair prescription, let alone a deeper understanding of how the
wheelchair can fit the social needs of the patient. This is the fragmentation of the
biomedical and the social.
Adjustment Issue A simple understanding of the rehabilitation process using
assistive technologies would integrate the technologies with the human body in
order to restore social functioning and cope with daily social needs. It is easier for
a child than an adult patient to integrate assistive technologies, and a wheelchair in
particular, simply because he or she is still developing social needs. A wheelchair-
bound child can play basketball instead of soccer whereas an adult patient who
has already developed a way of life may find it a difficult task to adjust their estab-
lished social needs and preferences with the prescribed technologies.
In addition, the rehabilitation process is much more difficult at the convales-
cence stage than at the acute stage. At the acute stage, the patient learns how to use
the technologies at the rehabilitation centre with the help of the physiotherapist
or the occupational therapist. Thus in the rehabilitation centre, the patient expe-
riences the technology acquiring stage, but how to transfer the skills they have
acquired to their daily living environment is another question. The real test of
whether integration of the technologies to the rehabilitation patient’s body is suc-
cessful is whether the patient really knows how to use them in their real life.
During the convalescence stage, when the patient returns home, he or she has
to use the technologies to interact with the living environment, both physical and
social. At this stage, help from family members is very important. First of all, fam-
ily members also have to learn how to use the technologies. Even with a simple
wheelchair, family members have to understand the problems and limitations of
the wheelchair when the patient is using it at home. When the wheelchair cannot
fully fit the home environment, then home modification is necessary. In addition,
either the patient takes the initiative to advocate the problem of using the wheel-
chair at home or family members have to be sensitive to the patient’s problem.
Thus, the rehabilitation process is not just how the patient learns to integrate the
wheelchair with his or her body, but rather it is a holistic process involving fam-
ily members who must also participate in the process of integration. In short, if
a wheelchair can become a social robot is not merely an integration of the body
and the machine. It is a process involving the patient and the assistance of the
patient’s family members working together to help the patient participate in his or
her social environment.
In Hong Kong, however, the concept of community rehabilitation provides only
a supply of food, home cleaning or home visit therapy. Conducting home visit
therapy is the same as using the patient’s home as a rehabilitation centre as the
5  Social Robotics in Health-Care Service … 61

therapy provided is similar to what the patient received in the acute stage. Most
rehabilitation patients cannot find success in using their technologies: Some even
have two wheelchairs, one for outside and the other for home use. Without the
help of family members, they would most likely retreat to their beds and their
wheelchairs would be abandoned and become rusty.
Hence, integrating the wheelchair so that it becomes a social robot is also a
social process. The social process can be a process provided by the community
rehabilitation programme; it can also be a process, a macro social process, which a
rehabilitation patient experiences when he or she returns to society.
Market Issue Sometimes a patient may not easily find a suitable wheelchair for
him or herself even if he or she is wealthy enough to obtain the best in the mar-
ket. The following examples illustrate that the design of a wheelchair can fit some
basic social needs of a rehabilitation patient but this design cannot be easily found
in the market.
The first example is about the wheelchair anti-tip device. In Hong Kong,
when a patient goes to the market to buy food or other daily necessities with
their domestic helper, the helper or the patient often hangs bags of stuff on the
push handles on the back of the wheelchair. This phenomenon is indeed common
in Hong Kong. If the bag is too heavy, it would easily cause the wheelchair to
topple and the patient then gets hurt. In order to be safe, the biomedical engineer
would always advise the patient acquires a wheelchair with an anti-tip device.
Interestingly, it is hard to obtain a wheelchair with an anti-tip device in the Hong
Kong market, the reason being simply because it is inconvenient for the helper or
the one pushing the wheelchair.
Some assistive technologies are also considered orphan technologies. In Hong
Kong, prescribing a wheelchair for a rehabilitation patient always encounters the
problem of a high abandonment rate. One of the many reasons is that the living
environment is too small for using a wheelchair. But even if a wheelchair can be
designed with movement in 360° directions, apparently, as demand is limited,
it is difficult to attract large-scale production. This issue of lack of market scale
demand means it is generally difficult to find a suitable wheelchair that fits the liv-
ing environment, in addition to assistive technologies in general.
Community Problem As early as 1985, Hong Kong already had a Building
Ordinance (The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) 2012)
requiring various kinds of buildings to have barrier-free access for disabled per-
sons. In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Ordinance (HKSAR 2013) was
enacted to protect disabled persons from unfair treatment. Moving on to the 2000s,
rehabilitation programmes have emphasized helping the patient return to the com-
munity. Despite the fact that the government strongly supports community-based
rehabilitation programmes, it seems that people’s understanding of the notion of
rehabilitation in Hong Kong in general is still very weak. The production of assis-
tive technologies is a good example.
As already noted, most assistive technologies are considered as orphan tech-
nologies because demand is limited; for example, the wheelchair with an anti-dip.
But these technologies should not be purchased individually in the general market
62 P. Law

place if they serve the basic needs of a rehabilitation patient, rather it should be
supported by the community (Walzer 1983). However, in Hong Kong, even the
funding model of a wheelchair is not primarily developed for the well-being of a
rehabilitation patient, let alone our community’s understanding of the social needs
of the patient.
First, Hong Kong is a modern and vibrant city; the pace of the city is fast. We
are seldom aware of what is happening around us. Although we have the hardware
such as a rehab bus or barrier-free environment for a disabled person, we may not
notice that a disabled person is walking next to us. Our fast pace may blind our
sensitivity to barrier-free access facilities and the wheelchair patient who may
need space to move on the road: some areas are too congested because pedestri-
ans use the wheelchair pathway, resulting in blocking the road for the wheelchair
patient. Thus, the atmosphere of the city itself is detrimental to the idea of bring-
ing the disabled back to the community.
Second, as we have learned thus far, some of the hardware provided for the
disabled may not really meet their social needs. Many Hong Kong people, particu-
larly the elder ones have the habit of going to a Chinese restaurant every morning
to enjoy tea and dim sum (a type of Cantonese food for breakfast). However, there
is always a problem for the wheelchair rehabilitation patient to go from their home
to their nearby tea restaurant, simply because the restaurant may not have any bar-
rier-free access or the route is not suitable for wheelchair transit. This would of
course limit their social recreational activities, which the community rehabilitation
programme has strongly promoted (Cheung et al. 2009; Welage and Liu 2011).
Another example is the organised wheelchair marathon competition by the
Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon (the Marathon). The Marathon intro-
duced a full and a 3-km marathon wheelchair competition in 2012. But the full
marathon was indeed too long a distance for the wheelchair participants and was
cancelled in the following years. In 2014, in addition to the 3-km marathon, the
Marathon piloted a 10-km wheelchair marathon in order to promote recreational
activities for the disabled. Because the wheelchair competitors and the runners
cover the same route, which includes very steep inclines, it was too difficult for
the wheelchair competitors to finish the 10-km race. Subsequently, the Marathon
re-routed the 10-km wheelchair race for the upcoming 2015 marathon. Despite the
fact that the organising party really wants to promote the well-being of the disa-
bled, this example, however, illustrates that they are not sufficiently aware of the
problems of wheelchair competitors.
It has become clear that Hong Kong is not only weak in the community reha-
bilitation programmes it offers, but that it also lacks a macro framework of com-
munity rehabilitation. The purpose of the community rehabilitation programme is
to help patients return, as much as possible, to their social life. These programmes
focus on bringing the patient back to their family, or providing service in day
centres, halfway houses and vocational training, or recently the establishment of
social enterprise. All these programmes are, however, patient centred, that means
focusing on how to empower patients to adapt themselves to the community. As
mentioned in the previous section, when a patient is discharged and returns home,
5  Social Robotics in Health-Care Service … 63

the rehabilitation programme would not be effective if family members do not or

are unable to participate together in the programme at home. And by the same
token, when the patient returns to the community at large, the community should
also participate together to work with the patient, helping them to return to their
normal social functioning.
Considering the example of going to Chinese tea restaurants; some wheelchair
patients, by means of using social media, have organised a self-help group to iden-
tify and then inform those who are fond of going to tea restaurants the best pos-
sible wheelchair accessible route from their home to the most nearby restaurant.
But these groups are organised by patients themselves and hence may not be able
to cover more information or provide support for the social needs of each of the
patients. If the government could take the initiative to organise this kind of group,
it would help patients to adapt back into the community more easily on the one
hand, and to arouse the community’s awareness in helping patients using assis-
tive technologies to participate in the social environment at large, on the other.
A wheelchair patient may have already gained the capacity to deal with the physi-
cal and social environment at large; however, support from the community is also
central for their participation (Chan and Chan 2007).

5.4 Wheelchairs and Social Robotics—Concluding

Remarks

Whether a wheelchair is a social robot or not is indeed inherently related to the

successfulness of the rehabilitation programme. In view of the Hong Kong reha-
bilitation programmes developed for wheelchair patients at the present stage, it
seems that wheelchairs can only function as robots rather than social robots. The
issue has been analysed at two levels, namely the micro- and the macro-levels.
At the micro-level, it is all about how the patient integrates him or herself with
the wheelchair. The integration is of course not merely fitting the wheelchair to
the patient from a physical or biological aspect. The purpose of the integration
is to restore to the greatest extent the social functioning of the disabled patient.
Integrating the biological and physical aspects are only the necessary conditions
for the restoration of the social functioning. This usually takes place at rehabilita-
tion centres or hospitals in which the patient learns how to integrate the assistive
technologies with their body. This is the stage of capacity training.
In the second stage when the wheelchair patient returns home, the patient’s
capacity for using assistive technologies in participating in the environment is
tested, both physical and social. Thus this stage is the negotiation between the
assistive technologies and the environment, particularly the social environment. In
Hong Kong, it is often at this stage that the patient faces frustration, as the wheel-
chair cannot help them participate in their routine social life. The Hong Kong
rehabilitation programme plan suggests a cross-sectional collaboration, while
in the actual situation there is always a problem of communication between the
64 P. Law

social and the technological. Lacking communication between the social and tech-
nological, the patient and the patient’s family members can barely find the mean-
ing of the wheelchair in their social life. The wheelchair remains a technology or a
robot; it can hardly become a social robot.
Despite the fact that some wheelchair patients can participate in the social envi-
ronment at home, they may encounter frustration when they return to the com-
munity at large. In Hong Kong, the government has been enhancing barrier-free
access and transport for the disabled through facilities that provide equal oppor-
tunities for integrating into the community. Undoubtedly, this hardware is built to
fit the mobility of the wheelchair, but whether it is fit for the patient is another
question. At very least we can see the disadvantage at the recreation or sports lev-
els where the government has deliberately developed their programme plan. The
problem may be attributed to social issues. Our community has been develop-
ing very good hardware for disabled persons such as the wheelchair patient. Our
community at large, however, lacks a good understanding, sensitivity or patience
towards the patients. The steep inclines of the 10-km wheelchair competition is an
obvious example. Similar to the micro-level, having the hardware for the wheel-
chair is only a necessary condition for the patient returning to the community at
large at the macro-level. But how to implement and integrate the hardware so that
the wheelchair can be part of the community at large requires equally a dialogue
between the social and the technical—the bio medical engineers, the social work-
ers, the Hong Kong authorities, the patients and their families. Indeed all those
involved in the everyday life of the rehabilitation of disabled people. At the macro-
level, a dialogue between the social and technical is the sufficient condition for
turning both the wheelchair and the barrier-free hardware into a social robot;
otherwise, it remains a robot if it only serves the function of mobility.

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related quality of life of community-dwelling elders in Hong Kong. Asian J Gerontol Geriatr
4(1):15–23
Fortunati L (2013) Afterword: robot conceptualizations between continuity and innovation.
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(eds) Assistive technology and artificial intelligence: applications in robotics, user interface
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thought. IEEE Intell Syst 22(2):18–24
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The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) (1995) White paper on equal opportu-
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Chapter 6
Intuitive Interaction Between Humans
and Robots in Work Functions at Industrial
Environments: The Role of Social Robotics

Antonio B. Moniz

The social dimension of worker–robot interaction in industry is becoming a

­decisive aspect of robotics development. Many problems and difficulties of robotics
research are not only related to technical issues but are framed by social aspects.
Human–robot interaction (HRI) as a specific research field of robotics tackles this
issue of intuition. One of the aims is to identify relevant research questions about
the possibility of the development of safer robot systems in closer human–machine
intuitive interaction systems at the manufacturing shop floor level. This chapter will
contribute to understanding the cognitive and perceptual workload for robot opera-
tors in complex working systems. The importance of robotics in work life is not
only to decrease the physical strains in manufacturing, but also it can increase the
need for situation awareness and risk assessment which implies higher perceptual
workload and psychological strains. The social sciences approach to such technol-
ogy assessment is of high relevance in order to acknowledge the dimension of the
intuitive interaction concept within social robotics.

6.1 Introduction

In recent debates it has become important to understand the definitions of social

robots’ abilities when they can (or not) be applied to “companion” robots. But the
discussion on robots with interaction capabilities in work environments has not
been included under the topic of “social robotics”, rather, this definition has been

A.B. Moniz (*) 
CICS.NOVA, FCT-UNL, Universidade Nova Lisboa, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal
e-mail: antonio.moniz@kit.edu
A.B. Moniz 
ITAS, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 67

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_6
68 A.B. Moniz

applied to some type of so-called “cobots” (Colgate et al. 1996). These include
‘social interaction with robots’ features (perception, sensing, haptic interaction,
communication) where people interact with robots that have some degree of aware-
ness of the human in terms of sensing abilities and/or interfaces and abilities to
interact and communicate with people. The fact that robots with such abilities are
introduced in a working environment means the relation between humans and these
machines also evokes the relation between co-workers and the human resource
management strategies in a company (Moniz 2014). It relates to a problem of
human–machine interaction, and the complexity of the work environment (Bijker
et al. 1987). It also becomes a dimension of job design where technical and social
criteria must be taken into account for the design of tasks and for the communi-
cation process (Huws 2006; Weiss et al. 2009; Bernstein et al. 2007). Meanwhile,
in industry there are a lot of examples of machine operators on the shop floor that
interact with automated systems using sophisticated communication features. These
can include not only data management (robot programme changes, data input and
retrieval) but also oral communication features. A robot which is assumed to have
‘social’ ability will require the ability to perceive its environment (perception) and
to reason about it (cognition), likely including the ability to detect social cues and
to reason about the world from the perspective of others. With this in mind, we
can also say that the new generation of industrial robots can also be recognised as
“robots capable of social ability”. But in these cases, the sound communication is
not as relevant as is the visual one. This implies that the definition of “language”
should be considered as well as gestural communication. In any case, such applica-
tions can use “natural interaction” as their most important elements. Nevertheless,
the communication capacities are not sufficient to classify these abilities as “social”.
Perception has become possible through the use of advanced sensor integra-
tion, which can be useful for the human operator by providing information where
humans have difficulty such as in collecting data. The cognitive feature is the most
difficult one as it could be useful for the human operator when presenting differ-
ent alternatives during problem-solving. Solutions such as this can be built upon
the operator inputs and from knowledge databases that such robots can use. As it
is usual for robot cells to be operated by different humans (in the same working
group or in different shifts), the knowledge management or reasoning can become
useful for task performance and for problem-solving.
The minimization of the cognitive and perceptual workload for robot operators
in complex working systems is very important, because it interferes with the task
performance and with operational safety. That can be highly relevant when different
robots with different roles and different designs are to be used in the manufacturing
industry to a larger extent. It is also necessary to investigate the transferability of
results from industrial environments to other fields where the introduction of robot-
ics is planned such as in health care, agriculture, mining, underwater, logistics, space
operations, inspection, disaster management, medicine and so forth. This chapter
examines in the following four sections the role of social robots from the perspective
of complex environments, intuitive interaction, cobots, sharing workspace and con-
cluding with some final remarks including consideration of safety issues.
6  Intuitive Interaction Between Humans and Robots … 69

6.2 Working with Robots in Complex Environments

Starting from the conceptualisation of ‘intuitive interaction with technology’

of robotic systems I aim to discuss applications within industrial environments
using the ‘social’ robotics approach. Such a concept should not be only applied
to humanoid systems. Complex working environments (CWE) implies the interac-
tion of humans with automated systems, and more often they include robots. This
has increased the possibility for eventual malfunctions or even dysfunctions; when
they occur the impacts can be severe.
During the 1980s, it was said, for example by J.F. Bard that “in general, robots
should be capable of outperforming a person in hostile working environments
where noise, vibrations, toxic fumes and other insults are present. Nevertheless,
they cannot operate in a disorderly setting. Parts to be handled or formed must be
in a known place and have a known orientation” (Bard 1986, p. 102). This means
that even in an unstructured work environment which has been called by Bard
a ‘disorderly setting’ a robot cannot operate. There have been important techni-
cal and conceptional developments since then, but this assumption continues to
be true. A balance should be found between the need to use a robot in aggressive
tasks of repetitive action or in hostile environments, and the lower capacity of a
robot when compared with the human performance.
In many sectors, such as automobile, electronics and metal engineering, robots
have been comprehensively introduced in this way. This means that, according to the
International Federation of Robotics (IFR), around 4 million workers around the world
have a close connection to robot operation in their work environment (IFR 2013). This
has increased the need to consider the social dimension of interaction with technol-
ogy in these environments. Ergonomics studies became fundamental in all sites where
robotic systems had been introduced, but psycho- and sociological inputs are only just
beginning in these areas. Indeed, most companies do not have such social scientists on
their staff. The solution to close working with robots found by companies is to physi-
cally separate the robot cells from the human presence through fences or guards. This
can be done without problem in larger companies but in small- and medium-sized
enterprises (SME) it becomes a problem due to the lack of available space on-site.
Robot manufacturers have started to develop new sensing systems and mechanical and
material features that can allow the closer interaction without barriers. Solutions are
still under research to develop more “intelligent” systems that integrate such sensor
components and allow a more intuitive communication and interaction with humans.
New robots with “social” abilities including more complex communication and rea-
soning capabilities will become more common in manufacturing environments.
Although there is an increased use of social robots for industrial sites, there are
still important features that can only be done by human operators. In answer to the
question what are the main task roles in a complex working environment one can
find the following:
• Operation control
• Maintenance
70 A.B. Moniz

• Operation monitoring
• Quality control
The performance of tasks must be understood within context of the compliance
of the aims of the task in a chain or system of tasks, and the features of its per-
former (a human or a machine). The question being asked here is: will a human
be replaced by a robot? Perhaps even by a robot with increased intelligence and
social abilities? My answer, based on my research experience and by literature
interpretation, would be no. That answer is also based on the fact that, whenever
the more “intelligent” the automatic system of machines becomes, the more com-
plex the problems that will occur. Anyway, the task roles attributed to humans and
machines in work environments must be analysed according to all sets of condi-
tions. When tasks are not designed according to the attributes of the performer,
the outcomes will not be those that are usually expected. This can happen in auto-
mated or in conventional operating systems. Some malfunctions can occur, or even
accidents. In other words, “unexpected events” may occur.
To run a batch manufacturing shop on an around-the-clock basis, systems have
to be able to respond to unexpected events, such as extra stock, defective material,
and premature tool wear out. But Bard added also a curious statement: “Adaptive
control, coupled with robots, makes this possible by largely eliminating the need for
a skilled operator to be present” (Bard 1986, p. 103). This is one of our key issues.
To be precise, it seems that whenever the working environments are more complex
or dense, the less it will be possible to “eliminate the need for a skilled operator”.
Some authors also point to the “system responses” which lead to a specific behav-
iour. But how do systems respond? Do they react, or are they providing information?
In the white paper from the EURON Special Interest Group on Cooperative
Robotics published in 2008 it was anticipated that for the next 10 years there
would be an advance of “high-level cooperative cognitive skills, while there is
a substantial need for improvement of individual cognitive skills, the ability to
achieve cooperation in planning, decision making and environment modeling is
the key to the development of network robot systems (NRS)” (Saffiotti and Lima
2008, p. 8). To understand this statement one should not translate those “cogni-
tive skills” as being applied just to machines. It would be too naïve to expect such
autonomous capacity. It makes sense now when we understand it applied to the
interaction with humans. In the same document and about the same expectations,
the group also discusses the HRI, stating that:
Better interfaces to control and interact with NRS will improve usability and make new,
broader applications possible. On the one hand, improved distributed cooperative perception
capabilities of NRS will make it possible to have effective interaction with people, by under-
standing different kinds of signals coming from single and multiple persons sharing the NRS
space; on the other hand, a scenario with multiple users interacting with multiple robots brings
about new challenges that will significantly impact on HRI (Saffiotti and Lima 2008, p. 8).

Probably, the most important question now is to ask “who makes the final ­decision?”.
An answer to this question will enable us to understand how those “systems” are
organised.
6  Intuitive Interaction Between Humans and Robots … 71

In general, in the manufacturing production based on automated equipment, the

fact that “unexpected events” can occur gains especial importance because acci-
dents, malfunctions or disturbances would impact the working conditions, the
expected productivity and all the outcomes. Disturbances with conventional sys-
tems are usual and are considered as a cost controllable element, but with auto-
mated systems, each time unit without production represents a much higher cost.
The production volume per time unit with automation is much higher than with
conventional equipment and when those “unexpected events” occur in an auto-
mated environment the implications for the economic efficiency (costs, delivery
times, quality) are not negligible.
To understand this dimension consider the fact that when skilled operators are
taken out of complex production systems it can lead to increased failures and acci-
dents. The implications of those decisions on economic efficiency are at stake;
decreased labour costs in an organisation can mean an increased probability of dis-
turbances or “unexpected events”, which can become a risk factor. Thus, this can
be one of our key issues to be discussed: job displacement and knowledge use.
Another way of exploring these problems further is to answer the f­ollowing
question: are the CWE trustworthy without skilled and responsible workers
involved directly? If the answer is positive, that would mean intelligent non-
human agents are enough to govern those environments. It would also mean
humans should rely on autonomous technology in important decision processes.
However, if the answer is negative, a responsible and precautious principle would
be to advise humans are always included in the loop. The more complex the
working environment would be, the more important it is to involve humans. This
assumption brings again the qualification, training and education elements; they
become crucial to understanding the problem.
We can also ask if it is possible to develop CWE with unskilled labour? This
would mean that in spite of the complexity of the working environment, the qualifi-
cation is not meaningful. The problem arises when one characterises “complexity”.
If by complexity we mean just the interconnection of several sets of equipment with
some degrees of complexity, but with a high degree of automation, one can con-
clude there is the possibility to integrate less skilled labour in such environments.
These workers could have only minor controlling or monitoring functions and this
occurs in several cases, in particular, in larger companies. The problem is that for
some “unexpected events” there is no capacity to solve the incident in the minimum
possible time. Usually, such occurrences start a complex and large process of deci-
sion-making and demands for external experts (technicians, engineers, etc.).
We can conclude that unskilled jobs are better applicable in simpler working
environments. Those that require more complex task content also need higher lev-
els of labour qualification. It is easily observable that more complex technologies
require tasks with complex contents, and this in turn always demands higher levels
of skills and qualifications. Those tasks are usually related to monitoring, control-
ling, but also require capabilities of fine-tuning programming and maintenance.
Operators with those capacities are also able to get more involved in the decision
process and in the governance processes of such technology systems.
72 A.B. Moniz

When we ask if automated systems are “unmanned” systems, what then could
be the answer? The correlation would appear to be obvious but it is not supporta-
ble. An automated task does not mean that a human should not be present to assist
or to be assisted. The cases where fewer humans are present in automated produc-
tion systems are those in the process industry, but very few can be found in the dis-
crete products manufacturing industry. Thus, the type of production can be a factor
that influences the possibility of human involvement in the transformation process.
Finally, which implications for “unexpected events” can reveal the work func-
tion in manufacturing? Answering this question means that with the develop-
ment of more complex production systems, the probability of “unexpected
events” occurring is higher. They are especially higher when the systems become
unmanned, that is without human control, and is why the prevention of “unex-
pected events” needs the inclusion of humans in the production process; there
becomes a clear “work function”. Once there is no work without humans the need
to include humans in the automation loop implies the existence of a work func-
tion which can be for operation, for monitoring, for control, for maintenance, for
programming, for tooling, or for other types of tasks that cannot become fully auto-
mated. This means that such working tasks performed by humans must include
the capacity of preventing “unexpected events”, or in other terms, malfunctions,
or even accidents. For these reasons, it becomes so important to think about and
design automated systems that necessarily include humans in the loop. Their exclu-
sion can be understandable by a nonconformity with basic management principles.
Usually, these type of organisational dysfunctions imply continuous problems in
the task performance and in the productivity outputs. They imply also social dis-
trust towards technological developments or even towards innovation policies.

6.3 Intuitive Interaction with Robots

The problems mentioned above, like dysfunctions, accidents, and other unex-
pected events, can be more relevant in the case of robots used in manufacturing
environments. As such technology tends to become more sophisticated; even in
manufacturing industry the implications for their use are becoming more impor-
tant while a high volume of automated systems are in operation worldwide. That
means the task roles become critical: the qualification for the job must be a factor
of system performance, the capacity for programming, controlling and operation
becomes even more precise, and overall the intensity of the task increases with the
complexity. Great efforts have been made in order to ensure the capacity can deal
with such demands. Furthermore, all the operations with most industrial robots
became simpler and the interfaces became lighter and easier to use.
The study of applications on industrial environments using robots includes the
arguments of intuitive interaction with technology. In a similar direction, the social
dimension of worker–robot interaction is becoming a decisive aspect of robot-
ics development. This dimension includes the knowledge necessary to operate
6  Intuitive Interaction Between Humans and Robots … 73

machines and systems of machines. It is no longer just a technology problem or

a technical challenge but one that is now highly relevant in CWE (robots, autono-
mous systems, etc.) in the manufacturing industry.
It is also necessary to investigate the transferability of results from industrial envi-
ronments to other fields where the introduction of robotics is planned (health care,
agriculture, mining, underwater, logistics, space operations, inspection, disaster man-
agement, medicine, etc.). Such types of new application are not only developed to
increase the performance of industrial robots when those developments can also be
reapplied with innovations to the traditional robotic systems, but they also became a
general issue for all type of robots, including also the professional service robotics.
Functions like manipulation, monitoring sensing or vision have been developed by
industrial robots and now they are applied in advanced professional service robots.
However, our focus is the type of robots that have been used in work environ-
ments which until now have demanded a more or less intensive interaction with
human operators. Some technological innovations have been tried in robots that
act with a high grade of autonomy or without direct human interference. However,
those robots that imply a common workspace with humans can present further
technical challenges. The communication features have to be improved, but also
all the robotic movement possibilities may interfere with the space where humans
have to stand for their work environment. Such interference may cause safety
problems and have to be cautiously considered in the programming phase.
The study of robotic applications and their social implications provided clear
evidence of this transferability. The main research questions are usually related to
industrial applications; now they can also be applied to new types of applications.
Equipped with general information about social behaviour, a robot should be
able to detect situations in which certain classes of social behaviours are appropri-
ate and to apply them. Such capacity implies also the feature of intuition in the
interaction with humans. In this case, a robot can have an autonomous “reasoning”
about how best to achieve its goals in a given social context, and should have the
ability to express itself in ways that will help it complete tasks in a wide range of
social situations. The frames of goal achievement must be settled in work environ-
ments. The higher the capacity is for “autonomous reasoning”, the higher must be
the intuition for humans to interact with robots. In this situation, a robot can con-
textualise its messages about its internal representations at this level, and “injects”
these communications into the interaction in a “socially acceptable way”, accord-
ing to the MAR definition (MAR 2014). From our point of view, this “socially
acceptable way” must be defined in a negotiated way with the working social part-
ners, or at least with the human operators that are working with this type of robots.

6.4 Social Robots and Cobots

Recent development of robotics has enabled the emergence of the new concept of
social robots as cobots. Although they do not have the same meaning they can be
used in similar ways in manufacturing environments, furthermore, it is notable that
74 A.B. Moniz

when one mentions “robotic assist system”, it is not only the case of health care
examples that we refer to but the concept can also be applied to manufacturing
operations.
Cobots are potentially well suited to safety-critical tasks such as surgery and
micro-assembly, or those which involve large and powerful interaction force such
as automobile assembly (Colgate et al. 1996, p. 433). Cobots are usually consid-
ered for a role as helping humans in their operative tasks and not to replace them.
This point is important to state because the aim is not the accomplishment of a
task with full autonomy, but the coordination of tasks with human operators, thus
the interaction features are crucial.
This new technology also created particular approaches to the concept of inter-
active learning and safety systems of assistive robot. The traditional interactive
learning with such system needs to be done on the job and most examples require
learning-by-doing procedures, although other examples can emerge. The same
applies to the safety measures. Assistive robotics and cobots in general imply that
the equipment must operate very close to the human operator in order that he or
she can be assisted. Safety rules and procedures can be strict, but those measures
have to be included in the design process, and also they must involve the human
operator to give information to obtain the best possible results.

6.5 Shared Workspace of Human and Robot

As we have explored in the discussion thus far operating a robot, or working

together with a robot, means that humans have to share a common space. For
safety reasons, a shared workspace between a human and a robot must be consid-
ered as a risk factor. Also, “a careful design of so-called intelligent assist systems
(IAS) or intelligent automation devices (IAD) and their operating procedures is
necessary when physical collaboration between machines and human workers also
have to follow ergonomic targets” (Krüger et al. 2009, p. 628).
Sharing a workspace means that the work process must take into considera-
tion the safety areas around robots. Interference between workspaces can occur
but only when the robot is switched off thus to ensure safety, the workspaces of
humans and robots are strictly separated in time or in space (Lenz et al. 2008).
That implies an increased possibility for positioning the human operator with fur-
ther monitoring tasks without direct intervention during operation. Under such
conditions, it is difficult to consider usual robots as co-workers.
The new research developments try to overcome these limitations but to do so
the consideration about safety conditions for operation is crucial. “The desired
coexistence of robotic systems and humans in the same physical domain, by shar-
ing the same workspace and cooperating in a physical manner, poses the very
fundamental problem of ensuring safety for the user and the robot” (Krüger et al.
2009, p. 633). In such environments the control of operation can present limita-
tions, and there is a need for sensor-based surveillance of the workspace.
6  Intuitive Interaction Between Humans and Robots … 75

6.6 Concluding Remarks: Safety Is Still a Key Issue

It is important to identify relevant research questions about the possibility of devel-

opment of safer robot systems in closer human–machine intuitive interaction sys-
tems at the manufacturing shop floor level. As I have presented in this chapter,
the features of industrial robots have been applied to service robotics and here the
developments produced a whole set of innovations such as the increased capac-
ity of human–machine interaction and communication. The autonomy features in
professional service robots have enabled new developments on autonomous per-
ception of environments. These developments could even provide autonomous
“reasoning” about how the robot can achieve its goals in a given social context.
Those new capacities are now applied to manufacturing robotics where the need to
interact with humans is very important. However, that interaction implies a further
need to focus on the safety issues when designing a production system with robots.
As the complexity of work environments increases it can produce the emergence
of “unexpected events” where the role of human control becomes more central.
Many authors agree that in the case of physically interacting robot assistants it
is obvious that a proven safety standard is of paramount importance (Hägele et al.
2002). But safety is not only a technical feature. Anticipating possible problems or
“unexpected events” is mostly a social capability that machines (and in this case,
robots) cannot have. In fact, tacit knowledge, qualified and experienced jobs are
key elements to ensure and improve safer workplaces with complex environments.
Social robotics cannot replace those human workplaces. Robotic manufacturers
are developing new safe robots to enable working alongside each other (Wallhoff
et al. 2010) that would mean systems with intuitive interaction capacities to ease
the co-working feature of those robots. Social robots with higher capacities of
interaction and communication have the capacity to become the systems that can
fit better into workplaces where human operators perform their tasks. The chal-
lenge would be how to also include these social robots in the manufacturing
environments.

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potential in human–robot systems. Interact Stud 8(3):465–482
Bijker WE, Hughes TP, Pinch T (1987) The social construction of technological systems. MIT
Press, Cambridge
Colgate J, Wannasuphoprasit W, Peshkin M (1996) Cobots: robots for collaboration with human
operators. In: Proceedings of the international mechanical engineering congress and exhibi-
tion (GA DSC), vol 58, pp 433–439
Hägele M, Schaaf W, Helms E (2002) Robot assistants at manual workplaces: effective co-oper-
ation and safety aspects. In: Proceedings of the 33rd international symposium on robotics
(ISR 2002), p 6
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Huws U (ed) (2006) The transformation of work in a global knowledge economy: towards a con-
ceptual framework. WORKS, Leuven, p 249
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Ann Manuf Technol 2(58):628–646
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cation (RO-MAN 2008), pp 130–135
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formal models and methods for cooperation. European Robotics Research Network (EURON)
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24:329–339
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ACM/IEEE international conference on human robot interaction, ACM. New York, pp 257–258
Chapter 7
Minimizing the Human? Functional
Reductions of Complexity in Social Robotics
and Their Cybernetic Heritage

Timo Kaerlein

Recently designers at the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory (ATR, Kyoto) decided to

shift their focus away from highly-lifelike androids to very minimalistic appear-
ances like that of the Telenoid, Elfoid and Hugvie models. Instead of trying to
simulate the appearance and behavior of actual human beings, the decision was to
sidestep the Uncanny Valley problem by restricting the robots to a functional mini-
mum in human likeness. This chapter investigates different approaches to complex-
ity reduction in social robotics, among them experiments that compared human
mime artists (theatrical robots) with actual robots in the interaction with autistic
children and the implementation of cartoon techniques to model emotions in the
generation of projected facial expressions. The notion of complexity reduction is
discussed with respect to its merits (especially from a systems theoretical frame-
work) and to its drawbacks. Beyond ethical considerations, the chapter argues that
the research on social robotics is linked with the cybernetic hypothesis (as formu-
lated by Tiqqun), a contemporary mode of governance and regulation that privi-
leges certain kinds of subjectification via communication and discourages others.

7.1 Introduction

He had bought a large map representing the sea,

Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they all could understand.
(Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark, 1876)

T. Kaerlein (*) 
Department of Media Studies, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany
e-mail: timo.kaerlein@uni-paderborn.de

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 77

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_7
78 T. Kaerlein

Fig. 7.1  Hugvie was
developed by ATR Hiroshi
Ishiguro Laboratory

The most recent telepresence robot model developed at the Hiroshi Ishiguro
Laboratory (HIL, part of the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute
International, ATR, Kyoto), called Hugvie, resembles a soft cushion with a
vaguely human shape (ATR 2012). It is less than a meter tall, comes in differ-
ent colors, is made from a stretch fabric filled with micro foam beads and—most
notably—has a pocket at the side of its head where users can insert their mobile
phones. Hugvie contains a microcomputer controlling an internal vibration motor
that is designed to simulate the interlocutor’s heartbeat in synchronization with
their voice transmitted via the inserted phone (Fig. 7.1).
Continuing the line of robotics research pursued with the Telenoid (2010) and
Elfoid (2011) models before, Hugvie is the current manifestation of an attempt to
enrich a tele-mediated conversation with some sort of haptic stimuli. Its drastically
minimalistic design—remote humanlikeness, implied limbs, and general simpli-
fied anthropomorphic appearance—is a sharp shift away from the highly realis-
tic Geminoid models developed at HIL (Fig. 7.2). To draw on an analogy from
the area of acoustic reproduction: Whereas Geminoid could be described as a high
7  Minimizing the Human? Functional Reductions of Complexity … 79

Fig. 7.2  Geminoid HI-2 was developed by ATR Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory. (Photo by Makoto
Ishida)

fidelity system with minimal distortions due to noise, Hugvie on the other hand is
a compressed standard of humanlikeness, delivering just the bare minimum of rec-
ognizably ‘human’ but de-individualized features to allow anyone interacting with
the device to ‘fill in the blanks.’ It is part of a series of “[s]tudies on cellphone-type
tele-operated androids transmitting human presence” (JST CREST 2010) and thus
intended as a means to enhance existing mobile telecommunications with robotic
technology. In the words of its inventors: “‘Hugvie’ is an epoch-making commu-
nication medium that can strongly transfer the presence of an interaction partner
despite its simple shape” (ATR 2012).
The robots at HIL were chosen as the opening example of this chapter because
they signify, in a rather drastic way, a tendency toward simpler shapes and less
lifelike appearances in robotics design that can be encountered at various other
sites too. This chapter investigates functional reductions of complexity in several
areas of social robotics, among them experiments that compared human mime art-
ists (theatrical robots) with actual robots in the interaction with autistic children
(Robins et al. 2006) and the implementation of cartoon techniques to model emo-
tions in the generation of projected facial expressions (Tsuruda et al. 2013). The
notion of complexity reduction will then be discussed with respect to its merits
(especially from a systems theoretical framework) and to its drawbacks. Beyond
ethical considerations, the chapter argues that the research on social robotics is
linked with the cybernetic hypothesis (Tiqqun 2001), a contemporary mode of
governance and regulation that privileges certain kinds of subjectification via com-
munication and discourages others.
80 T. Kaerlein

7.2 Types of Complexity Reduction in Social Robotics

What we are dealing with in the case of Hugvie is first of all a reduction of com-
plexity referring to visual traits, i.e., the abstraction of appearance to a general
humanoid shape applicable in all kinds of scenarios. Instead of trying to simulate
the appearance and behavior of actual human beings, the decision was to sidestep
the Uncanny Valley problem (Mori 1970) by restricting the robots to a functional
minimum in human likeness.1 Furthermore, the robots at HIL are rather simple
machines, they do not follow scripted behavioral patterns and feature no algorithmic
social intelligence like other social robots, e.g., KASPAR (Dautenhahn et al. 2009),
Paro (Wada and Shibata 2006) or Kismet (Breazeal 2002). Their main purpose is to
function as media of telecommunication with some robotic functionality like motor
control and humanoid shape. But of course, complexity reduction is an issue in
social robotics in general. Two main types can be differentiated:
1. quantitative limitation of possible input parameters via available sensors and algo-
rithmic modeling (what counts as a stimulus that the robot reacts to and what is
ignored?);
2. quantitative (and often qualitative) limitation of possible internal states and outputs
according to the robot’s capabilities and use scenario.

The two types of complexity reduction are connected insofar social robots are
often programmed to display a certain behavior or enter a certain state in reaction
to environmental stimuli. The first type refers to how the robot perceives its sur-
roundings (inputs), whereas the second type applies to its interactions with (mostly
human) counterparts (outputs).
An important caveat is in order here: Reduction of complexity is not a defect
of robotics exclusively. To be more precise, it is not even a defect at all. Niklas
Luhmann, the founder of social systems theory, differentiated “two types of sys-
tems: those in which each element can be related to every other element and those
in which this is no longer the case” (Knodt 1995, p. XVII). The latter provides
his definition of complexity as the totality of all possible events where there are
always more possibilities of action than can ever be actualized. Only a limited
amount of all available information is ever selected for internal processing which
is a necessary condition for systems of any kind (biological, psychic, social, etc.)
to function. The ensuing complexity differential (Komplexitätsgefälle) between
system and environment serves as a protective mechanism—if too much complex-
ity is allowed into a system, it usually breaks down, as in the case of psychopathol-
ogy. The same is true for social interactions—not every possible communicative
link can be actualized in a given situation, not every subtlety of talk considered.
Social systems, according to Luhmann, interface between the abundant complexity
of the world and the limited resources available to face it (Neves et al. 2006).

1Bartneck et al. 2009 have argued that the Uncanny Valley hypothesis is not empirically valid.

However, their own study is methodologically questionable and not statistically firm because it
is centered on a single robot model, Geminoid HI-1. The subsequent design changes at HIL indi-
cate that the Uncanny Valley hypothesis remains to be an important criterion for the developers.
7  Minimizing the Human? Functional Reductions of Complexity … 81

Social robots seem especially well suited to aid in this task as their typical use
cases demonstrate. They are used as therapeutic tools in the interaction with chil-
dren with autistic spectrum disorders and elderly people suffering from demen-
tia—two scenarios in which simplifications are essential to make communication
possible in the first place (Dautenhahn 2003; Shamsuddin et al. 2012; Diehl et al.
2012; Broadbent et al. 2009). Here, an interesting diversion from the more common
trend to build anthropomorphic robots can be observed. Generally, anthropomor-
phic appearances, behaviors, and modes of interaction are greeted in the design of
social robots as very effective facilitators of social interaction (Fink 2012). People
tend to react more positively toward robots exhibiting humanlike facial expres-
sions and emotions as opposed to purely functional designs (ibid., p. 201), which is
why the utilization of anthropomorphic features has usually been embraced by the
research community within certain limits—including the Uncanny Valley problem
and the problem of raising too high expectations on the side of human interact-
ants (Duffy 2003). This finding has often been explained with people’s tendency to
make sense of unfamiliar phenomena by projecting humanlike characteristics onto
them in order to rationalize their behavior (ibid., p. 180). In the case of people with
autistic spectrum disorders or dementia, however, the biggest problem seems to
consist in a diminished ability to correctly interpret complex human behavior. This
is why design considerations in these fields differ from the more common approach
of anthropomorphization in human–robot interaction.
Comparable to animal therapy, social robots can be employed to reduce social
exchange to the very basics by filtering out all the noise and clutter that usually
occurs in interpersonal contact. Social robots have the advantage of unambiguous-
ness as has been very convincingly shown by an experiment that compared the
levels of engagement of children with autism with different kinds of ‘robots’: a
small humanoid doll in a humanlike and a plain variant and a professional mime
artist, dressed up either as a robot or as a regular person (Robins et al. 2006). The
children preferred the robotic variant in both cases, supporting the hypothesis that
reduction of complexity is indeed the core mechanism that makes robots attractive
to autistic children in the first place.
Contrary to the highly complex and potentially unpredictable behavior exhibited in peo-
ples’ social interactions, the use of robots in the Aurora project allows for a simplified,
safe, predictable, and reliable environment where the complexity of interaction can be
controlled and gradually increased (ibid, p. 482).2

The authors of the study express as their future “aim to incrementally guide the
children with autism to interact with robots toward more complex and human-like
behavior” (ibid., p. 506).
Another widely used technique in social robotics research is the generation of
facial expressions in robots following standardized psychological catalogues like
the Facial Action Coding System (Ekman and Friesen 1978). Here, too, a drastic

2The results of the study influenced the design of the KASPAR robot developed at University of

Hertfordshire.
82 T. Kaerlein

reduction of complexity is achieved by limiting the range of human emotional

expressions to a set of archetypes that is easily implementable and recognizable.
For example, Tsuruda et al. (2013) have proposed a supplement to the Elfoid
device—a mobile phone-sized telepresence android developed at HIL—in order to
project cartoon emotions like anger, happiness, sadness, fear, etc., onto the robot’s
face. The basic technique here is that of caricature—by exaggeration and over-
simplification certain traits are stressed and others neglected. It is to be expected
that such simplified conversational settings work well in interactions with autis-
tic children and/or demented people (cf. the conclusion to the literature review
in Diehl et al. 2012). But research in social robotics is by no means restricted
to these areas. The next section of this chapter reflects on the possible feedback
effects that might result if interactions with robots become a regular element of
social exchange—e.g., as imagined in Cynthia Breazeal’s (2002) vision of socia-
ble robots that has been quite influential in the research community.

7.3 Standardization of Social Situations

One of the grand research goals in social robotics is to make human–robot interac-
tion ‘natural’ and intuitive, responsive to dynamic contexts and socially sophisti-
cated. “Social interaction is not just a scheduled exchange of content, it is a fluid
dance between the participants” (Breazeal 2002, p. 173). Looking at actual inter-
actions with robots at the current level of technical sophistication though, it is hard
to avoid the impression that this is not what is happening. Contrary to the intended
trajectory—social robots gradually becoming more socially intelligent—people
interacting with the current generation of robots tend to adapt their own behavior
to tune into the robot’s limited expressive capabilities and internal states. What is
described as sociality by robotics researchers often resembles a formal game-like
structure with predefined categories that are usually transparent enough to allow
people to formalize themselves into adequate interactional partners for the robot.3
At best, we deal with a kind of aseptic sociality, a clinically controlled space of
registered exchanges that leave little room for the emergence of social complexity.
Accordingly, a recent survey found that a majority of the participating staff of a
disability service organization do not see social robots as humanlike social actors
at all, but rather compare them to other technical appliances with specific tasks
like coffee machines or vacuum cleaners (Wolbring and Yumakulov 2014).
Interestingly though, a lot of people seem to actively look out for this type of
minimally social interactions. Social psychologist Sherry Turkle has described
the transition to what she calls the “robotic moment” in society in great detail. In
her analysis of people’s interactions with artificial agents she discerns a specific

3Gillespie (2014) has made a similar argument referring to the process of algorithmic profiling,

e.g. in content recommendation services and online shopping.

7  Minimizing the Human? Functional Reductions of Complexity … 83

quality of interaction that she calls the ELIZA effect—“that desire to cover for
a robot in order to make it seem more competent than it actually is” (Turkle 2011,
p. 131). An ‘as-if’ mode of interaction prevails that leads to people engaging in a
play-like encounter in “complicity with the machine” (ibid., p. 24). Turkle has also
directed her attention to case studies dealing not only with social robots, but with
online communication behavior and the management of social contacts via mobile
devices, among others (Turkle 2008; Turkle et al. 2006). Here, she finds similar com-
municative patterns at work that are more akin to an elaborate simulation of social-
ity consisting of game elements and processes of administrative management. The
great advantage of this type of interactions lies in their risk-free and highly flexible
nature, indicating “a certain fatigue with the difficulties of dealing with people”
(Turkle 2010, p. 5). A similar point has been made by Sparrow and Sparrow (2006)
who additionally argue that the success of many contemporary social robots is based
on a scheme of deception by design that we have an ethical imperative to avoid.
Blackford (2012) has objected to this line of thinking by pointing to the usefulness
of minor consensual illusions that may actually signify healthy social behavior.
Anthropomorphizing robots may belong to this type of innocuous self-indulgence
and willing suspension of disbelief.
Leaving aside these psychological and ethical considerations for the moment,
one may ask for the model of communication underlying the reformatting of the
social observed by Turkle. Drawing on cultural theory, the next section argues that
parallel to the process of domestication of robots into the social world that we are
currently witnessing, a different kind of domestication is taking place. In this per-
spective, social robotics can be seen as the engineering branch of a specific mode
of political regulation.

7.4 The Cybernetic Hypothesis and Its Impact on Social

Robotics Research

Again, Breazeal (2002) delivers the prompt: when introducing the need for socia-
ble robots, she considers them as helpful tools in scientific inquiry to the extent
that they can model human behavior. By comparing data generated in controlled
robot experiments, insights into social behavior may be gained with the ultimate
aim of regulating the social order.
Furthermore, given a thorough understanding of the implementation, parameters of the
model could be systematically varied to understand their effects on social behavior. By
doing so, social behavior disorders could be better understood, which in turn could aid in
the development of effective treatments (ibid., p. 1).

In this context, she refers to existing research on autism and the possible use of
robots for therapy (Dautenhahn 2000). Autism is an especially interesting case for
the argument made here as it is typically characterized by an unwillingness or ina-
bility to participate in communication and further social interaction.
84 T. Kaerlein

Tiqqun (2001) have proposed a radical critique of a mode of governance they

call the cybernetic hypothesis. They describe a paradigmatic shift in the way control
is organized when the cybernetic hypothesis supplants liberalism. “Contrary to the
latter, it proposes to conceive biological, physical, and social behaviors as some-
thing integrally programmed and reprogrammable” (ibid., p. 4). Historically, cyber-
netics was a field of interdisciplinary research formed around groups of scientists in
post-WWII US military-sponsored programs. Some of the main premises of cyber-
netics—the study of “control and communication in the animal and the machine”
(Wiener 2007)—are the structural homology of living and nonliving systems,
a holistic approach to knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, and a transition
from the observation of linear processes to circular causality and nonlinear dynam-
ics, which would later be described as feedback mechanisms that lead to a self-reg-
ulation of system behavior. As an academic field, cybernetics has not survived into
the present, with funding and institutionalization peaking in the 1960s and going
down throughout the 1970s (Pias 2004). As an epistemology and consequently a
political model of management, it is still thriving thanks to various exports from the
sciences to the realm of social policy (e.g., Deutsch 1963; Beer 1967).
Sociocybernetics have subsequently become normalized and are today an
­integral—if mostly unconscious—rationale of political, economic, educational,
judicial, and health care institutions. As Dieter Mersch has stated with reference
to Tiqqun (2001), the societal function of cyberneticization lies in the creation of
self-disciplined citizens (Mersch 2013, p 79f).
Each person was to become a fleshless envelope, the best possible conductor of social
communication, the locus of an infinite feedback loop which is made to have no nodes.
The cyberneticization process thus completes the “process of civilization” to where bodies
and their emotions are abstracted within the system of symbols (Tiqqun 2001, p. 18).

Frictionlessness and smoothness of the flows of information and communica-

tion become an imperative of the highest order in an information economy. It is
through these means that sufficient transparency can be provided to sustain the
self-regulatory mechanisms of the system. This is precisely the model of com-
munication underlying social systems theory which has drawn extensively on
works by authors working in the field of cybernetics, among them Heinz von
Foerster, Humberto R. Maturana, and Francisco J. Varela (Paetau 2013, p. 86). In
Luhmann’s theory of society, communication is the basic element of social repro-
duction and every blockage of communication and/or obstacle in the creation of
follow-up conversations hinders it. It is not so much the quality of communication
that is decisive but its pure existence as a symbolic exchange. Reducing the com-
plexity of informational flows via standardization and conventionalization is thus a
prime mechanism of guaranteeing their perpetuation.
In a self-regulated society as imagined by sociocybernetics—and it is my argu-
ment that social robotics research is at the forefront of its realization—autistic
spectrum disorders are simply unacceptable. Individuals absorbed in their own
inner mental states act as information sinks, they do not process external informa-
tion and do not feed it back into the flow. In their nonparticipation, they resemble
the ancient figure of the idio-tēs (ἰδιώτης), the private man who does not take part
7  Minimizing the Human? Functional Reductions of Complexity … 85

in public affairs. As such, he is an element of social disorder, a potential source of

noise and disruption, and has to be returned to a state of readability like a damaged
hard drive. Whereas historically, they would have been locked up in a mental asy-
lum or penitentiary, primarily with the goal of removing them from the surface of
public discourse (Foucault 1965, 1979), the current mode of regulation proceeds
differently. Taking into account the notion of reprogrammability, the right stimuli
are determined to transform the suspected individuals into active participants of
the fully transparent social order. The goal is to make them accessible again for the
capture and flow of information and thus addressable for further communication.
Accordingly, social robots can be seen to fulfill a double function in a sociocy-
bernetic regime. On an ideational level, social robots are the perfect citizens as
they are infinitely reprogrammable and adjustable. Secondly, they serve as plat-
forms for social experimentation and as a means of integrating those subjects whose
self-regulation fails from a systemic perspective, whose observations elude sec-
ond-order observations. As it is individual human beings with heterogeneous weak-
nesses who do not live up to systemic expectations, a society of—metaphorical or
actual—robots can begin to seem like a desirable model. In this respect, “the cyber-
netic hypothesis is today the most consequential anti-humanism” (Tiqqun 2001, p. 6).
The cybernetic hypothesis allows for “two kinds of scientific and social experiments”:
• “to turn living beings into machines”, and
• “to imitate the living with machines” (ibid, p. 13).
In its behavioristic focus (Ashby 1956), cybernetics has from its inception favored
the analysis of forms of operation compared to questions of essence, nature, or
materiality (Paetau 2013, p. 78). Cyberneticians, “biologists, doctors, computer
scientists, neurologists, engineers, consultants, police, ad-men” share the common
fantasy of a “Universal Automaton” (Tiqqun 2001, p. 13) that is a well-functioning
element of the all-embracing feedback loops that make up society.

7.5 Conclusion

I have argued throughout the chapter that social robotics invests in specific types
of complexity reduction to make possible human–robot interactions that resemble
interpersonal encounters. In many instances, some of which have been discussed
in the preceding pages, robots are built that are humanlike in a very rudimentary
way so that people interacting with them are able to project additional traits as
a way of personalization. Social complexity in human–robot interactions can be
controlled to a very high degree which has some therapeutic value, for example
in the treatment of autistic spectrum disorders or dementia. Whereas the vision of
sociable robots aims at incrementally increasing the complexity of these robots to
make them more acceptable for society and thus find new use cases, a different
trajectory seems equally likely. As Turkle and others have observed, a standard-
ization of social situations is taking place in robotics but also in other areas of
86 T. Kaerlein

mediated telecommunication. This raises urgent ethical and political questions, but
from the standpoint of cultural theory, another aspect might be even more impor-
tant. Social robotics research shares a number of premises with the cybernetic
hypothesis as identified by Tiqqun and can be described as the engineering branch
of a contemporary regulatory regime. As they facilitate the flow of information
and (tele-)communication and make accessible sealed-off minds, social robots find
their place as useful tools in the propagation of limitless communication and trans-
parency of observations.
The field of social robotics is operating in very sensitive areas where the risk of
dehumanization is always close at hand. It is thus recommendable that the research
community pay close attention to the ways sociality is rendered in their experi-
ments and how they can avoid to contribute to a total cyberneticization of all forms
of interaction. The first and most important question in the field should always
be directed at target groups’ needs. There is a real danger of robot experiments
being run with no clear benefit to the affected parties other than a stimulation of
the robot-producing industry. Apart from such an obvious inversion of means and
goal, one might consider how relational ties and affective bonds between people
can be strengthened without resorting to robotic facilitators. If the problem-solv-
ing approach is narrowed down to the question of what type of robot would be
best in any given situation, other approaches may not even be considered at all.
Additionally, having otherwise passive people interact with robots might seem like
a therapeutic success, but more research is needed to ensure that these interactions
are actually according with participants’ individual needs. Calling robots ‘social’
does not ensure that their behavior is always interpreted as such. When social
interaction becomes just another mechanical task to accomplish for residents of a
care facility, it might not bring about the positive effects on mental well-being it is
supposed to. Whereas the idea of the Universal Automaton can be seen as part of a
unifying transhumanist endeavor, that is the creation of the perfect citizen, a better
benchmark for the quality of social research might be the amount of diversity it is
capable of handling. This may at times include the option of nonparticipation—to
abstain from communication altogether.

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Chapter 8
Open Sourcing Social Robotics: Humanoid
Artifacts from the Viewpoint of Designers

Davide Fornari and Serena Cangiano

The aim of the paper is to define a remit of interest for design and designers in the
field of products and services employing human face as an interface with users.
From the point of view of design culture, humanoid artifacts, are at the intersec-
tion of product design, visual communication, and interaction design. The release
of open hardware platforms, such as Arduino Robot, as well as the diffusion of
fabrication laboratories (fablabs) and open design practices are the early mani-
festations of a wider interest toward social robotics accompanied by the possibil-
ity of building working prototypes of humanoid artifacts. The use of human face
as interface in human–computer interaction adds analogic content to interaction
processes in an unmediated and unobtrusive way, transferring human–computer
interaction to the field of interpersonal communication. Nevertheless, the field of
anthropomorphic artifacts is generally neglected by designers and rather controlled
by engineers and experimental psychologists. Starting from a definition and tax-
onomy of humanoid artifacts, the aim of this chapter is to describe the paradigm
of human–computer interaction through case studies of humanoid artifacts and
to define criteria for the evaluation of humanoid artifacts from the perspective of
design practice.

D. Fornari · S. Cangiano (*) 
Laboratory of visual culture, SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern
Switzerland, Canobbio 6952, Switzerland
e-mail: serena.cangiano@supsi.ch
D. Fornari
e-mail: davide.fornari@supsi.ch

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 89

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_8
90 D. Fornari and S. Cangiano

8.1 Introduction

Tomás Maldonado considers the proliferation of automata during the eighteenth

century as a form of struggle against the dualism between practical and theoreti-
cal knowledge. At this stage a debate on the utopic role of machines and on their
capacity of improving people’s lives began: the association of technical objects
to human morphology is envisioned as a way to “favour the trend of considering
machines as a model for human beings” (Maldonado 2005).
The main effort for scientists, artists, and craftsmen dealing with humanoid
artifacts, which in the past meant mainly automata, was to make the idea of an
anthropomorphic machine socially acceptable in order to eventually host it within
the domestic landscape. This technological translation of the human body, which
is at the origin of modern robotics in Japan, had to face for long the opposition
of the Catholic church (Maldonado 2003). This was connected with pagan and
Jewish imaginarium of beings created by Man, such as Golem, that can be defined
as ‘dreamlike mechanics,’ which are evidently nonfeasible but of high impact
on culture (Hornyak 2006; Maeda 2005). The path toward social acceptance of
anthropomorphic machines and objects can be read across time, and it shows how
religions and ethics had an influence over the status of technical objects and the
community connected with their production (Hornyak 2006; Legrenzi 2002).
The aim of this chapter is to define key theoretical issues regarding the field
of robotics from the viewpoint of designers. The increasing availability of open-
source robot hardware allows the participation of large audiences in the design of
social robots and humanoid artifacts. By ‘humanoid artifacts’ we refer to serial
products or products serially used (i.e., diffused or used through information and
communication technologies (ICTs)), which incorporate technology or offer tech-
nological performances and employ a facial configuration as an interface.

8.2 A Taxonomy of Humanoid Artifacts

A classification of humanoid artifacts is required to offer sound tools for the evalu-
ation of human–machine interaction. These artifacts entail issues connected with
human brain cognitive specificity in the perception and recognition of face, as well as
psychology of communication. The perceptual misunderstanding of face recognition
without the presence of a real human face, but in front of a reproduction of face, is
the advantage of humanoid artifacts: the face offers the feeling of presence to users.
If we accept anthropomorphic configuration of face in humanoid artifacts as
a specific feature, it is important to evaluate in which typologies of artifacts it is
employed. For this reason, we propose a taxonomy of humanoid artifacts, working
both for historical and currently produced devices, based on dimensions (2D or 3D)
and movements (still or moving) (see Fig. 8.1). The reproduction of face has specific
features connected with the physical or perceptual support: discrimination between
static and dynamic artifacts, as well as bidimensional and three-dimensional ones, is
of main concern.
8  Open Sourcing Social Robotics … 91

Fig. 8.1  Taxonomy of
humanoid artifacts: on
x-axis dimensions, on y-axis
movement. GUI stands for
Graphical User Interface, TUI
for Tangible User Interface,
RUI for Robotic User

Technologies employed in the reproduction of face influence the efficiency

of humanoid artifacts. Realistic avatars used in social networking software such
as Second Life are rendered graphical objects (bidimensional, yet looking three-
dimensional) that risk losing their efficiency when movements are slow as a result
of low performance (RAM, data bandwidth) of the hardware hosting the interaction.
Realistic androids freely moving were impossible to build so far, due to the quan-
tity of compressors needed to manage the actuators for face expressions: they are lim-
ited to a semi-sitting position. Yet, the diffusion of hardware for 3D prototyping and
PVC stamping are making the production of three-dimensional chassis a relatively
low investment, and they allow a high quality, even for limited print runs.

8.3 The Impact of the Open-Source Movement

on Building Robots

Open hardware and open design have made available physical and technological
artifacts whose information and implementation specifications (blueprints, code,
material bills) are released to the public under free licenses. These latest devel-
opments, together with digital production techniques and the increasing “maker
movement” (born in the early 2000s), are triggering the diffusion of new practices
of design and production of social robots.
These practices are based on the possibility for designers and experts of technol-
ogy, as well as for do-it-yourself amateurs, to interact with on-line ­communities,
platforms, and collaborative services, with the aim to use and/or share digital files
(hardware schemes, software codes, 2D and 3D files) of a robot, and to allow for
92 D. Fornari and S. Cangiano

modification and production through technologies and low-cost rapid prototyping

services. The practices connected with open source are the epiphenomenon of the
passage from postmodernity to a participative era (typical of peer to peer approach)
where the culture of “do it together” is made possible by ICT and in the specific
case of physical artifacts, such as social robots, by production technologies.
The development of open-source hardware became a viable solution in the
year 2000 thanks to three factors (Cangiano and Romano 2015): the availability
of larger bandwidth for accessing the Internet and exchanging large source files
for hardware projects; the reduction of the costs for hardware technologies and
their production; and the commercial success of open hardware projects such as
Arduino, Little Bits, RepRap, and Sparkfun that conveyed to a larger public the
benefits of such a business model.
The key features of the development of open-source hardware can also be
­condensed into three (Gibb 2014): open-source hardware as an infrastructure for
the production of devices not yet available on the market (innovation enabler);
open-source hardware as an infrastructure for empowering people’s communities
in the collaborative solution of complex problems and socially relevant problems
(open-source hardware as user and community empowerment tool); and open-
source hardware as an infrastructure determining the simplification of technology
(technology mediator).
The protagonists of open-source hardware have shown a clear interest in robots.
The company Arduino, producer of the open-source electronics platform based on
easy-to-use hardware and software, released in May 2013 the Arduino Robot, a pro-
grammable device with a couple-wheeled board mounting two processors, one con-
trolling the motors and the other reading sensors and controlling actuators. Differently
from traditional firms that develop and design robots, the open hardware companies
such as Arduino propose a new approach that considers robots as a means for peo-
ple to have a sense of ownership of the technology whilst figuring out a technological
future that is close to nonexpert people. For example, the open hardware famous claim
“if you cannot open it, you do not own it” is the basic concept that was spread within
the maker community for communicating a new way of interacting with devices in
everyday life. Built upon this concept, Brian David Johnson, Intel’s resident futurist,
reflected on what makes a twenty-first century robot different from a twentieth century
robot arriving at the notion that: “I’d say that a twenty first Century Robot is imagined
first. It’s certainly social, open source, and iterative, but also filled with the hopes and
dreams of the people that made her, him or it. It’s also easy to build!” (Johnson 2014).

8.4 Theoretical Issues: An Agenda for Designers

Approaching Robotics

Starting from the definition and taxonomy of humanoid artifacts, we intend to

highlight a number of crucial, theoretical issues that designers should evaluate and
assess while approaching the design and production of social robots, due to the
increasing availability and distribution of open technologies and designs.
8  Open Sourcing Social Robotics … 93

Intuitiveness The simplicity and intuitiveness of an artifact depends on how

easily the user can benefit from it with little or without any prior instruction. This
implies the use of metaphors familiar to users, such as models for use easily added
to the principal function of the device or service, or communication and interface
systems which are uncomplicated or based on innate metaphors such as in analog
and nonverbal communication. Simple interfaces and devices are the ultimate aim
of every design to reduce functional complexity and to guarantee an acceptable
degree of usability to the nonexpert end user. Often entire product families have
seen a reduction of signs in the interfaces, reversely proportional to the increase
in the functional complexity offered by devices, such as in the Apple iPod (Maeda
2005). Nowadays, the use of interfaces and simple interaction systems based on
innate models is widespread in every field of application. The intuitiveness and
simplification of devices has promoted easy, untrained, nonacculturate forms of
interaction, which have virtually eliminated the need for localizing product inter-
faces, thus contributing to the globalization in marketing products.
Pragmatic of Human Communication Face and facial expressions participate in
the transmission of messages, according to the pragmatic of human communica-
tion. In the case of humanoid artifacts, interfaces can move within a range from
abstraction to figurativeness, since we can recognize faces and characters even in
slightly defined configurations of faces.
In order to structure the pragmatic of human communication, Watzlawick et al.
(1967) define a number of axioms. Their aim is to describe the process of commu-
nication as a calculus, in the most precise way, through meta-communication. The
first axiom of pragmatic of human communication is ‘One cannot not communi-
cate’: every behavior is a kind of communication to someone who is eager to give
an interpretation of this behavior. Both verbal (natural languages) and nonverbal
communication (posture, gestures, and especially facial expressions) are constant
source of messages. When a face is ‘artificial’, as a result of an action of design,
it adds, mixes, and overlaps symbolic, communicational, and semiotic issues. The
face can be considered as a stage where the individual parts (i.e., eyes, mouth,
ears, nose, eyebrows, etc.) perform as actors in a theater company.
Analog communication encompasses nonverbal communication and symptom
strategies (e.g., silence, sleep), thus including the role of face and its expressions
in communicating the relationship aspect of a message. According to Watzlawick,
the combined use of both digital and analog communication is specific to homo
sapiens (fourth axiom). Humanoid artifacts enrich the dynamics of human–machine
interaction by employing an innate metaphor: the analog communication of facial
expressions.
Analog communication is envisioned as a more precise and accurate way of
communicating in comparison with natural language, as it can express faster than
language emotions such as delight, surprise, dislike (Maeda 2005). Nevertheless,
analog communication presents advantages and disadvantages when employed in
human–machine interaction: while the ability of recognizing a face and its expres-
sions is innate, many ‘symbols’ of analog and nonverbal communication vary
between cultures (Legrenzi 2002).
94 D. Fornari and S. Cangiano

Facial Prominence In visual communication, images have a main role for their
anaphoric nature: they repeat the object they depict through representation instead
of language. Concerning the face, experimental psychology proved how the same
face produces more socially desirable information when it is prominent compared
to the rest of the body (Archer et al. 1983). The face-ism index was introduced in
order to measure facial prominence on print and TV media. It is the ratio of two
linear measurements: the distance between the top of the head and the chin (x),
and the distance from the top of the head to the lowest visible part of the subject
(y). The face-ism index formula is x:y and its result can vary in a range between
0 and 1. Close-ups have a face-ism index of 1, while medium to full shots have
decreasing values. A shot excluding the face has a face-ism index of 0.
In an experiment, people were asked to assess personal features, ability, and
competencies of persons portrayed in the stimuli with different degrees of face-ism.
As a result, the people represented with higher facial prominence were considered,
despite gender, more intelligent, assertive, and attractive, compared with those with
a lower face-ism index. The important research result on facial prominence is the
positive social expectation of face images with high face-ism index (Costa and Ricci
Bitti 2000). If applied to humanoid artifacts, these experimental results suggest that
face representation drives the perception of users concerning secondary qualities,
those depending on the interpretation of a subject, as defined by John Locke.
The Uncanny Valley The ‘uncanny valley’ is a diagram connecting familiar-
ity and human likeness of humanoid artifacts. The hypothesis by Mori (1970),
researcher and roboticist, was that the more a humanoid artifact resembles its
model, the more likely users notice the small differences. Later scholars have
largely equated this idea of human resemblance with the social acceptance of
robots (e.g., Höflich and El Bayed in this book). In case of high resemblance, a
response of revulsion is possible. The more a humanoid artifact is similar to its
model, the more our sense of familiarity increases. This increase is higher in case
of moving artifacts. Small but detectable differences put a stop to this increase,
since artifacts are no longer perceived as familiar and pleasurable, but rather unfa-
miliar, nonpleasurable, eerie, and uncanny. Mori chose as an example a prosthetic
hand, which can be a perfect replica concerning color, texture, mobility, but still is
uncanny during a haptic interaction, since it is going to be cold at touch.
Mori’s hypothesis was for long considered nonscientific, mainly because it was
a theory based on partial artifacts (i.e., a prosthetic hand). According to Hiroshi
Ishiguro, if a robot is very ‘robotic,’ we do not compare it with a human model in
order to recognize it. But if a robot looks like a human being, then we recognize
its model, and we notice the small differences between android and human being
(Hornyak 2006). MacDorman (2005) established a connection between the uncanny
features of technical objects and the fear of death in human beings: machines
resembling their model too much unveil their artificial nature which can eventually
be eerie, unexplainable, and scary for nonexperienced users (Bartneck et al. 2007).
Experiments on the uncanny features of highly resembling humanoid arti-
facts are based on the categorization of images by users. Seyama and Nagayama
8  Open Sourcing Social Robotics … 95

(2007) employed morphing between real images and drawings in order to show
how the uncanny valley hypothesis is confirmed for highly resembling artifacts
in presence of abnormal features. Research conducted by Bartneck et al. (2007)
highlights how the aspect of artifacts influences their resemblance to human
models. They propose a correction to the uncanny valley diagram: the uncanny
cliff, since there are a limited number of highly human-like robots. “It appears
unwise to attempt to build highly human-like androids, since they would not
be liked as much as more machine-like robots” (Bartneck et al. 2007, p. 372).
But beyond the problem of ‘familiarity’ versus ‘likeability’, the issue is the con-
cept of uncanny, which refers to eeriness. Highly human-like artifacts with a
detectable artificial nature result as uncanny: if a machine’s interface is eerie and
unacceptable, no interaction is possible.

8.5 Case Studies

We adopted the instrumental case study methodology in order to examine design

aspects connected with open-source humanoid artifacts. The selection of case
studies is provided here for presenting and assessing different strategies adopted in
open-source robot projects employing human face in human–machine interaction
processes.
Arduino Robot Arduino robot1 is a do-it-yourself and open-source platform for
learning robotics and building robots (see Fig. 8.2). The robot is completely repro-
grammable, thanks to a USB port that allows programs developed via Arduino
IDE (integrated programming environment), the easy to use electronics platform,
to be uploaded. It consists of two rounded printed circuit boards: the top board is
the control and interface unit, the bottom board is the sensor unit featuring wheels.
It has been designed to support the easy configuration of robotics applications so it
features a number of integrated inputs, such as potentiometers, buttons, and floor
sensors.
The users can program the behaviors of the robot by connecting a USB cable.
Arduino Robot features sensors and actuators mounted on two printed circuit
boards. The robot has two processors, one on each of its two boards. The micro-
controller boards are based on the ATmega32u4. The users can add additional
parts according to the project they intend to develop (e.g., eyes, arms, etc.)
(McComb 2013; Margolis 2013).
3D Printed Animatronic Robot Head The Animatronic Robot Head is an elec-
tronic kit designed to provide people with a tool for learning about the 3D printing
processes behind the production of the parts of a robotic body (see Fig. 8.3). It
consists of a robotic puppet made of speakers and servo motors. The robotic head
is controlled through the use of servo motors, easy to use and accessible electronic

1Arduino Robot, http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Robot (retrieved on 20/11/2014).

96 D. Fornari and S. Cangiano

Fig. 8.2  Arduino robot, 2014

motors that are commonly available in the market for modeling hobbyists. The two
servos are programmed for controlling the movement of the head while two speak-
ers are used to make the robotic eyes and an LED mouth for a friendly remote-
controlled robot. The parts are designed with Tinkercad,2 an easy to use
Web-based 3D modeling software, originally developed for children in order to
lower the barrier for nonexperts.
iCub The iCub is an open-source cognitive humanoid robotic platform devel-
oped at IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) as part of the EU project RobotCub
ended in 2010, whose main goal was to study cognition through the implementa-
tion of a humanoid robot with the size of a 3.5 year old child3 (see Fig. 8.4). iCub
has 53 motors that move the head, arms and hands, waist, and legs. It can see and
hear; it has the sense of proprioception (body configuration) and movement (using
accelerometers and gyroscopes). The humanoid robot iCub is able to make
human-like eye and head movements. Moreover, it can recognize faces and grasp

23D Printed Animatronic Robot Head, https://learn.adafruit.com/3d-printed-animatronic-robot-

head?view=all#mission-control (retrieved on 20/11/2014).
3An Open Source Cognitive Humanoid Robotic Platform, http://www.icub.org (retrieved on

20/11/2014); An Open Framework for Research in Embodied Cognition, http://www.robotcub.org

(retrieved on 20/11/2014).
8  Open Sourcing Social Robotics … 97

Fig. 8.3  3D printed animatronic robot head: an entry-level robotics/animatronics project by

Adafruit, 2013–2014

Fig. 8.4  iCub robot during an affordances demo, 2010

98 D. Fornari and S. Cangiano

Fig. 8.5  Inmoov robot,
2012–2014

objects. The iCub project is open source: the platform is distributed openly and it
features open-source software that can be downloaded for free from the website,
modified, and improved. Thanks to its level of openness, the project has been sub-
sequently adopted by more than twenty laboratories worldwide that develop
research in robotics or robotics applications. Recently, the iCub has been further
developed with the integration of force control, a skill that allows the robot to
interact with people in a safe and gentle way. In order to minimize weight and
cost, some of the iCub’s parts such as the hand have been produced from acryloni-
trile butadiene styrene (ABS) using 3D printing techniques. The choice of design-
ing the parts for the additive manufacturing technology and processes removed the
need for extensive machining which would add significantly to the overall cost of
the robot (Tsagarakis et al. 2007).
InMoov InMoove4 (see Fig. 8.5) is a life-sized android completely made out of
3D printed parts that can be downloaded from the most popular collaborative

4Open-Source 3D Printed Life-Size Robot, http://www.inmoov.fr (retrieved on 20/11/2014).

8  Open Sourcing Social Robotics … 99

Fig. 8.6  Ono robot, 2012

3D model file sharing platform on the Internet, Thingiverse.5 The creator of the
project is Gael Langevin, a French sculptor and model marker who has spent years
designing and engineering the animatronic robot. The InMoov project started with
the design and development of an arm and a hand and it has reached half a body
(Abid et al. 2014). The cost is around 900 US dollars. It runs on an Arduino, and
all the parts can be produced with a DIY low-cost 3D printer with a
12 × 12 × 12 cm printing volume.
Ono Ono (Fig. 8.6) is an open-source social robot that can be produced using
DIY tools and techniques6 (Vandevelde et al. 2014). The actual robot consists of
four main parts: the modules for the control of the facial features (eyes, eyebrows,
mouth); the frame of the robot, made from laser-cut interlocking cross-sections
that accommodate the sensors and actuators of the facial modules; foam and tex-
tile cover that create the software body of the robot and protects the inner part; the
control unit and electronics that consist of a separate control box with joystick
interface and a microcontroller that reads the joystick position in order to send the
joystick values to the servo controller inside the robot. The robot has been tested
with autistic children. One of the main goals of the project is to avoid the major
obstacles in the study of human–robot interaction with social robots because there
is the lack of platforms to allow for tests with large user groups. Since Ono robot’s
parts are soft, made with cheap materials and fabrics, it suits the context where the
users have to touch or hug it.

5http://www.thingiverse.com/hairygael/designs (retrieved 21/2/2015).

6Edubots: Ono, http://io.workspace.howest.be/edubots/ono/ (retrieved on 20/11/2014).
100 D. Fornari and S. Cangiano

8.6 Discussion and Conclusions

This chapter presents some key theoretical issues and a collection of case studies
in order to define an agenda for the designers of humanoid artifacts. Increasing
availability of open-source robot technologies and robot designs, and the rise of
robot makers’ movement (Baichtal 2014) created the need for this agenda setting.
The work is based on the hypothesis that is due to specific features of face recog-
nition processes, we tend to treat humanoid artifacts as characters, transforming
human–machine interaction into something more similar to a process of commu-
nication between peers, hence falling into the pragmatics of human communica-
tion, and, further, that designers should have a larger impact and awareness in the
domain of robotics.
The Arduino robot has made available to the largest community ever a platform
for building self-moving robots, thus simplifying the experimentation on robotics
and empowering designers. In general, the diffusion of open-source “kits” such as
the 3D printed animatronic robot head, shall be saluted as a significant contribu-
tion to the diffusion of robots and robotic technologies, as it allows for robotics to
enter an increasingly public discourse. iCub has been equally important in provid-
ing the experimental platform of a highly accomplished robot for groups of scien-
tists other than its creators. InMoov can be acknowledged for its availability as a
“downloadable” item that can be 3D printed in an environment that is increasingly
familiar to that of professional designers: fablab. The project Ono was introduced
to show how the prominence of human face and face actors can simplify the con-
struction of a social robot, helping designers to focus on specific facial features
rather than on a global similarity with human models.
Employing a multidisciplinary approach and gathering concepts from the fields
of design, technology, history of applied arts, experimental psychology, and robot-
ics, a number of qualitative and quantitative parameters can be offered for set-
ting an agenda for designers and amateurs who want to tackle the issue of social
robotics in their practice. The highlighted factors for assessing humanoid artifacts
include:
• discussing the level of intuitiveness of an artifact;
• describing the interaction channels of the artifact from the viewpoint of the
pragmatic of human communication;
• measuring the face-ism index of the artifact;
• defining the position of the artifact in the uncanny valley diagram.
These factors are far from being definitive, but they present one response to the
lack of precise framework for assessment and design that is obvious in the rap-
idly developing and innovative field of robotics and human digital assistants.
Compared with the example of mobile ICTs, the design of a robotic interface is
far more complex. This complexity is both due to the lack of standards for robot-
ics at this relatively early stage of development, and to the technological com-
plexity of three-dimensional interfaces, mixing sensors, and actuators versus the
8  Open Sourcing Social Robotics … 101

bidimensional design of mobile device interfaces. If intuitiveness and ­familiarity

must be attributes of interfaces in both cases (robots and mobile devices), the
results are far more diverse in the case of robots due to the abovementioned lack of
standards.
Nevertheless, open-source robots have a high potential in making social robots
more acceptable for a variety of reasons: open-source technologies are less
expensive and collaborative, thus multiplying the experimentations and d­ iffusing
the production and actual presence of robots out of the laboratory ­environment.
Moreover, in open-source projects design, production and usability testing
are merged as part of a design-oriented process, more focused on ­deployment
of already existing technical solutions than on innovative technologies. The
simultaneous design, production, and usability are also connected with a shared
and communitarian approach, where not only designers test their products, but
they take advantage of open on-line and off-line networks of scholars, designers,
and amateurs. In this sense, the use of open-source technology and free licenses
affects the very design process of robotics.

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 Part III
Social Robots in Everyday Life
Chapter 9
The Mobile Phone: An Emotionalised
Social Robot

Jane Vincent

This chapter builds on the notion that humans, who have appropriated mobile
phones and incorporated them into their everyday lives since the 1980s have, in so
doing, created their own personal social robot. It asserts that the constant always
on connectivity afforded by this device is enabling a communicable stream of
consciousness and emotions that are intertwined between the mobile phone and
their emotional self. This, in turn has created a dependence and attachment to the
device, to the relationships it mediates and more, such that it is so fully integrated
into people’s day-to-day living they cannot imagine how to conduct everyday life
without it. The outcome of this human and machine interaction, and the electronic
emotions it imbues, is a device that has become an emotionalised social robot that
is exclusive to its user.

9.1 Introduction

In this chapter I explore the proposition that the mobile phone has become
an emotionalised social robot and ask how has the human machine interac-
tion involved in using a mobile phone transformed it thus. My previous research
(Vincent 2013) has asserted that the personalised mobile phone and its user com-
bine to co-create a social robot. In this chapter I develop my exploration of this
unique bond and symbiotic relationship to examine the importance of emotion in
this context. I will argue that the mobile phone is not only a personalised social
robot but, furthermore, it is so emotionally driven and charged with the feelings of

J. Vincent (*) 
University of Surrey, Surrey, UK
e-mail: j.vincent@surrey.ac.uk

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 105

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_9
106 J. Vincent

its user that it is an emotionalised social robot. This is made possible by the flex-
ibility of the mobile phone systems and applications that allow its user to shape
and reshape its functionality to meet their personal needs. Touch, hold, gaze, use
of headphones, vibration and physical mobility (co-located with the user) are
just some of the haptic properties of the mobile phone that stimulate action and
electronic emotions. This flexibility of design makes the mobile phone a more
dynamic and adaptable machine than many of the more rigid and purpose built
social robots such as AIBO, Paro or Hugvie as will be discussed later.
Contemporary literature by others on human robot interaction includes explo-
ration of emotion from biological, cognitive and philosophical perspectives. For
example Nitsch’s and Popp’s (2014) cognitive examination of the expression
of emotions in robots and Ferrando’s (2014) gendered post-human perspective
have recently added new research to the debate on emotion and robot design.
Ferrando’s suggestions that contemporary research ‘relocates the discourse within
a symbiotic paradigm rather than a dualistic one’ and that ‘robots are going to
evolve in unique and peculiar ways which are hard to predict’ (Ferrando 2014)
highlight the diversity of research and the opportunities for multidisciplinary
developments in this field of study. Emotion associated with a social robot typi-
cally occurs when the emotion has been designed and engineered into the robot
to emulate or respond to specifically identified human needs. However, in Syrdal
et al’s (Syrdal et al. 2007) study of a personalised social robot companion they
report the familiarity that develops between a human user and a robot which
affirms the role of emotion in establishing the companion status of the robot:
‘individual differences change as participants become more familiar with the
robot’ (p. 1147).
A further point to consider in this introduction is that the mobile phone as an
emotionalised social robot is different from the robot designed and engineered
to be personalised and empathetic to its human user (Dautenhahn 2004) in that
the mobile phone has not been intentionally designed with robotic functionality.
Rather it is a communications and entertainment device that has multiple function-
alities including a miniaturised computer, telephone, television, games console,
camera and video recorder which are appropriated and personalised in a unique
way by its user.
In this chapter I explore the robotic turn within the human that is determined
by the human user’s intuitive emotional responses to everyday life activities trans-
acted via their mobile phone. These emotional triggers form the basis of the com-
municative practices and mediated actions delivered via their mobile phone. I
develop this argument further by suggesting that this relationship is dominated by
the user’s emotions. Furthermore, the reason for their personalisation practice is
that it enables mediation of emotions between the user and the content on their
mobile phone, as well as the communications they transact (in any human–human/
machine–machine combination).
The discussion in this chapter is framed by the theoretical concepts of the pres-
entation of self (Goffman 1959) and electronic emotions (Vincent and Fortunati
2009). The chapter draws on various research studies conducted since 2003 by the
9  The Mobile Phone: An Emotionalised Social Robot 107

author (cf Vincent 2003, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2014). These studies examined this
close attachment people have with their mobile phone and provide the basis for the
assertion herein that the mobile phone has become an emotionalised social robot.
The background to the development of both mobile phones and social robots is
examined to provide the context for further discourse. The chapter ends with some
concluding thoughts about future developments regarding the role of the human
user in the shaping of emotionalised social robots.

9.2 Theoretical Concepts

Central to the theoretical debate regarding the use of mobile phones has been
its role in enabling the presentation of the self of the user. The symbolic inter-
actionist approach of Goffman (1959) and Mead (1967) explored the differences
between private and public behaviours. The dramaturgical concept Goffman
developed highlights how humans interact as if performing on a stage. Aspects
of their self are kept ‘back stage’ and only shared with close confidents, if at all,
and ‘front stage’ behaviours are not withheld but form their public persona. Ling
and Pedersen (2005) were among the first to publish studies of mobile phone users
in which this backstage/frontstage tension was explored in the context of mobile
phone use. They highlight how it is being used to manage and balance the tensions
between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’; the persona that individuals choose to show and pre-
sent to others is the one that manifests how they wish to be seen—the ‘me’. But
the mobile phone also allows its user to explore their self, the ‘I’, without having
to communicate with others at all. In my prior studies (Vincent 2010) I found that
mobile phone users share a special intimacy with their device and this extraordi-
nary relationship is, in part, explained by the emotions involved as they explore
their self and their close relationships. They do this by choosing the content that
they keep on their phone, particular photos, messages, favourites, apps and so on.
These are the unique indicators of their emotional memories and expressions of
facets of their self. This personalised content is the sum of their identity and the
information they draw upon to express their self to others.
This emotional interaction between humans and machines is the subject of
Vincent’s and Fortunati’s (2009) work on electronic emotion. These are the emo-
tions created, lived and relived as a result of interacting with machines; electronic
emotions are not new or different from those experienced in all aspects of every-
day life but they are prompted or stimulated by machines. Emotions are educed
when humans and machines interact; as well as touching and using machines, elec-
tronic emotions could also be prompted by just thinking about them—you do not
have to touch in order to sense or feel an emotion (Maldonado 2003). Knowing a
memory, an image, a contact, a text message from a friend, is stored on the device
is sufficient to stir emotions and the constant touch, presence or even thought,
of the mobile phone could trigger these memories and emotions at any time.
These special qualities of mobile phone use that combine human and machine
108 J. Vincent

capabilities are also explored by Sugiyama (2013) who posits that the melding of
relationships and mobile phone use has turned the device into a quasi-social robot
leading to a paradox of power and weakness caused by the ‘heightened complexity
in the relational dynamics’ (2013 p. 82) that is involved in managing the equipoise
between the different emotional, social and technological pressures the relation-
ship entails. Note here that although the examples thus far regarding electronic
emotions have been about close links between mobile phone and user, the prin-
ciple that electronic emotions are created as a result of interaction with a machine
also applies to all types social robots. However, emotion research regarding robots
has tended more towards the creation of a robot that can feel emotions, interact
with humans and react to situations in a totally human-like way (Breazeal 2003;
Novikova et al. 2014). I move on now to discuss the background behind the devel-
opment of mobile phones (any of which, when combined with their user, can be an
emotionalised social robot) and the simultaneous development of social robots.

9.3 Background

Mobile phones are one of the most contemporary communications media and they
follow a history of centuries of innovation and technological advance in human’s
understanding and development of computational machines. They also reflect
changing communication practices that enable people to be in touch almost wher-
ever they are in the world (Fortunati et al. 2012). Over the three decades since
hand-held mobile phones began to appear in everyday use in Western Europe they
have provided a highly individualised and intimate personal communications facil-
ity. An individually assigned phone number, and services and features that can be
uniquely personalised have enabled the mobile phone to become a virtual icon of
their user (Vincent 2003). The mobile phone is also different from other simul-
taneously available electronic computational information and communications
devices (for example personal computers, laptops, etc.) due to its small size, port-
ability and singularity.
The evolution of telecommunications and media services over the last two cen-
turies has been associated with technological advances, societal changes and
developments in day-to-day life (Vincent 2014). Each generation of new informa-
tion and communications technology (ICT) brings with it new devices and the
world of mobile communications is no different; the humble mobile phone, also
called a portable phone, a cellphone or a handy depending upon where in the
world you are, has moved on from the original ‘brick phones’ of the 1980s. In the
mid-2010s it is now beginning to be known more generically as a ‘smartphone’,1
although this is a particular category of mobile phone. There are thousands of
models, makes and types of mobile phone from those that provide only basic voice

1In this chapter I use the generic term ‘mobile phone’.

9  The Mobile Phone: An Emotionalised Social Robot 109

and text services (e.g. Doro PhoneEasy 5082) to others that have ‘smart’ connec-
tivity and convergent capabilities that enable it to function as a fully wireless
(WiFi) enabled personal computer (e.g. iPhone63). There have been many steps
along the way as the mobile phone transitioned from a simple analogue device that
only made and received voice calls (c1975) to one with a digital interface on
which data could be transmitted and thus text messages (c1991). A few years later
camera phones were introduced and then feature phones which added access to the
internet. Smartphones, originally launched in 2007, have higher data speeds, WiFi
and convergent technology connectivity and, of course, there are many hybrids of
these various mobile phone types with different combinations of capabilities.
Since 2013 mobile phones have further advanced in their form and functional-
ity providing the option of mobile phones, that primarily use the 3G and 4G cel-
lular technologies for connectivity, and tablet devices, that primarily used WiFi
connectivity; both types of device can mostly also use both technologies. Voice
communication over the internet is now common practice and so the original hand
held mobile phones of the 1980s have evolved into a device with multiple inter-
faces and modes of connectivity. Thus many of the capabilities of mobile phones
are now replicated on tablet devices and the convergence of devices and technolo-
gies continues apace.
This now means the mobile device in your pocket can have the capacity and
functionality of a desktop computer, video and audio recording device, voice and
text communicator with messaging services, radio and television, games console,
music player, painting and art box, camera, newspaper, book, access point for mul-
tiple applications offering health monitoring, translation, education, photo edit-
ing, information access, document storage and more. This is the device that is in
the hands of new mobile phone owners and users of all ages across the globe and
which has enabled people to adapt and change their social practices; learn new
digital skills associated with, for example, art and photography, or maintain and
monitor their health to name but a few. It is important to note that the concept of
the combination of user and their mobile phone creating an emotionalised social
robot is one that applies to any type of mobile phone, and, to some extent, also to
the tablets and tiny laptops that many people now carry as their primary communi-
cator. The key is that it must be the primary portable ICT device on which the user
is most reliant.
During this period of phenomenal mobile phone growth robots have also expe-
rienced an upsurge in technological advancement and usage, both as devices
designed for niche purposes that at times supplant human actions, as well as those
that support or complement them. Similar to media and communications tech-
nologies robotics and automatons have a long history as described by Fortunati
(2013). Today robotics and autonomous systems are integral to future technology

2http://www.doro.co.uk/Products/Mobile-phones-and-accessories/Doro-PhoneEasy-508-UK/

(accessed 19 November 2014).

3http://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-6/?cid=wwa-uk-kwg-iphone-com (accessed 19 November 2014).
110 J. Vincent

strategies globally. They are designed to support all industries, as well as being
integral to future visions of an ‘Internet of Things’ (Ferber 2013) in which the
machine to machine interaction exceeds human internet and wireless use and soci-
ety becomes more dependent on ICTs and Robots to survive. Fortunati observes
that robots have moved through developmental changes from early automata,
mostly serving decorative and entertainment functions, to those having more
critical contributions to society such as military robots prosecuting war or, in the
domestic sphere, where they supplant traditional caring roles, especially those car-
ried out by women. ‘The robots have moved on to become “social” robots and as
such they aim to substitute at least some parts of human caring such as company,
affect, communication, and entertainment’ (Fortunati 2013, p. 121).
The purposing of a robot so that it can in some way manage affect is an inter-
esting development, especially in the field of health and social care, and educa-
tion. These are not robots that ‘feel emotions’ but rather ones that are designed
to respond to or elicit an emotional response from their user as part of their
functionality. To some extent humanoid, or animal robots such as AIBO4 (a
robot dog) and Paro5 (a robot seal) are being made emotional as part of their
being anthropomorphised by their human interactants—perhaps to make their
use more comfortable and acceptable to humans. Some robots are programmed
to respond to emotion signs and deal with the cognitive aspects of behaviours.
Paro, the robot seal, acts a comforter for its user who is often a person isolated
by loneliness or dementia. Paro is designed to respond to touch in some of the
ways that might be experienced when petting a dog or cat6 but it does not make
too many demands of the user. The focus of the designers and makers of these
robots is to interpret the human behaviours the robot will encounter and provide
it with the technical capabilities to respond appropriately. Thus, for example
KASPAR (Dautenhahn et al. 2009), a robot designed to interact with children
with special needs, will react in a particular way such as if touched. KASPAR
has been successful in the process of assisting children who have difficulty inter-
acting with other people, however it responds to a particular action associated
with an emotion rather than sensing and intervening before the child, for exam-
ple, actually touches it. There are a multitude of examples of developments in
robotic design such as Aldebaran’s NAO and Honda’s ASIMO7 which are
humanoid robots that mimic, and attempt to replicate, human interaction, move-
ment and some emotion. Made to look like a traditional humanoid robot they
have white body panels and mechanical hinged joints. In this description of

4http://www.sony-aibo.co.uk/ (accessed November 28 2014).

5http://www.parorobots.com/ (accessed November 28 2014).
6http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/08/paro-robot-seal-dementia-patients-nhs-japan

(accessed November 28 2014).

7http://asimo.honda.com/ (accessed 3 December 2014).
9  The Mobile Phone: An Emotionalised Social Robot 111

NAO by Alderbaran there are some analogies with the mobile phone relationship
already described and I will return to this further on.
NAO is a 58-cm tall humanoid robot. He is small, cute and round. You can’t help but love
him! NAO is intended to be a friendly companion around the house. He moves, recognises
you, hears you and even talks to you! Since his birth in 2006, he has been constantly
evolving to please, amuse, understand and love you. In short, to one day become your
friend. Aldebaran created NAO to be a true daily companion. He is the little creature who
helps you be your best. His humanoid form and extreme interactivity make him really
endearing and loveable. (Alderbaran8)

Different from AIBO, Paro, NAO and ASIMO are the Geminoid robots developed
by Ishiguro’s Intelligent Robot Lab at Osaka University.9 These robots are made
with a skin-like body covering and machine interface to look, and be dressed, as
lifelike humans. Plans for these human-like robots include roles as newsreaders or
as receptionists in hotels where the check-in process is fully automated.10
Also from Ishiguro’s team is an hybrid robot, the Hugvie, which translates
into vibrations the voice of a caller to a mobile phone placed in a large humanoid
shaped cushion that can be cuddled to feel the intonation of a loved one.
The reproduced vibration that conveys heartbeats in alignment with that voice, all help to
sense an active presence of the partner and intensify the affinity toward him/her. Although
the transfer of information is merely through voice and vibration, it is an innovative com-
munication medium that embodies the minimum required elements for transmitting a
humanlike presence. (Hugvie Geminoid11)

The difference between the Hugvie and the mobile phone as an emotionalised
social robot is that Hugvie aims to deliver a heightened level of intimacy in rela-
tionships by simulating human presence in a physical form perhaps making it m ­ ore
like Sugiyama’s (2013) description of a quasi-social robot. A mobile phone that is
emotionalised by the electronic emotions it engenders in its user does not need the
stimulation of hugging cushioned vibration. Hugvie is a simulacrum of the human
presence, whereas an emotionalised social robot mobile phone creates and enables
electronic emotions prompted by feelings and expression of the user’s inner self
(‘I’) and the shared self (‘me’). Hugvie could be used to augment the presentation
of self by adding additional sensorial experience to using a mobile phone, although
it would need to be miniaturised if it was to be completely integrated and indeed
future 5D and 5G technologies might well be the enablers to achieve this.
This short review of historical and contemporary developments in mobile phones
and social robots highlights a growing tension between the technologies, their human
users and the machine qualities; not least those which proffer solutions for activities
that humans have not yet realised could be supported or replaced by robots.

8Who is NAO? http://www.aldebaran.com/en/humanoid-robot/nao-robot (accessed 3 December

2014).
9http://www.geminoid.jp/en/robots.html (accessed 3 December 2014).
10http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/slideshow/564921/androids-will-greet-guests-japanese-smart-

hotel/?image=3 (accessed 3 February 2015).

11http://www.geminoid.jp/projects/CREST/Hugvie.html (accessed 3 December 2014).
112 J. Vincent

9.4 Discussion

It is clear from the background literature already explored that this relationship
between human user and their personalised social robot (mobile phone) is dif-
ferent from cyborg technologies and robot machines, not least in that it was not
created to be a social robot machine; instead it is the result of the symbiotic rela-
tionship of mobile phone and human emotions that makes this human machine
interaction different. The outcome is a close relationship in which the device
becomes a natural, innate, always available, taken for granted and assumed con-
stant presence. This relationship relies on the adaptability of humans to accom-
modate the vagaries of technologies that do not always exactly meet needs but,
nevertheless, can be accommodated. Kaerlein (2012; and this volume) has identi-
fied in his research an important point with regard to this always available con-
nectivity and presence of the device: that of the immediacy that this personalised
social robot mobile phone demands and can deliver. The function of a mobile
phone as a mediator is now diminishing as there is, in effect, no need for media-
tion as the device and human are as one. Kaerlein examines the controversial
Elfoid phone which looks almost foetus like rather than like a mobile phone, robot
or other more conventional hand-held device. Designed by the Geminoid team the
haptic qualities of the Elfoid skin-like covering is challenging; touch is an impor-
tant part of the emotional experience but an artificial skin is possibly conveying
a different kind of emotional response than real skin might. It is interesting to
note also that although humanoid robots do not have these ‘self’ proclivities their
human creators have focused on the public presentation of the robot ‘self’ in order
to integrate them or at least make them acceptable to humans. Thus NAO has a
‘cute’ persona, a sweet voice and has learned to say ‘ouch’ when it falls. Its human
interactants, or interlocutors, appear endeared to it much as they would a small
child. What we do not yet know is what difference NAO and other similar robots
make to the humans they interact with, and in particular the electronic emotions
they engender.
Imbued within interactions enabled by the mobile phone are the emotions
which are in human thoughts and actions. Furthermore, these emotional interac-
tions are expressed on a mobile phone using more senses that on other devices
as the constant touch and immediacy of contact explored above show how close
the relationship between user and device has become. All this means that once we
have a personalised mobile phone we can use it as a channel for emotions to pro-
vide emotional contact when needed or simply to feel the sense of a loved one’s
presence. We voraciously utilise it for the to and fro of emotional interaction both
within the self and between humans. As humans become more familiar with their
personalised mobile phones they use them more and more to complement their
activities and, in turn, the machine becomes part of their emotional arsenal, their
support. Witness the number of people using their mobile phone on a London
Underground train where there is no WiFi or cellular signal; they are not com-
municating with others rather they are communicating with their self such as by
9  The Mobile Phone: An Emotionalised Social Robot 113

reading downloaded books, emails, watching films, looking at photos, reading text
messages and listening to music. In this way the mobile phone becomes a means
of reflecting their feelings as they respond to content they have stored on their
device; content placed there for a reason and which forms a part of their explora-
tion of who they are, their identity.
Social robots are most likely to be considered to be robotic, machine like,
repetitive, perhaps humanoid but in any event an inhuman thing created by
humans to alleviate the strain, and tensions of particular tasks or perhaps to deal
with life-threatening situations (harmful materials, bomb disposal, etc.). However,
as humans see the benefits and the perhaps essential role robots may have in day-
to-day living they start to have a different view of them. A robot cannot function
without a human; even if this is merely turning it on and programming its origi-
nal activities (and turning it off when not needed); there are an increasing number
of instances where a human cannot complete certain actions without the interven-
tion of a robotic interaction: a lift door opening in response to body movement; an
electric door opening as we leave a building; a dishwasher that performs the task
of cleaning and drying out crockery and cutlery or a washer drier machine that
does the same for our clothes.
Where does the social robot end and the human being begin in this emotional-
ised relationship between humans and machines? When the machine is performing
a distinct and pre-programmed function this is quite simple to explain, although
there is a precursor to the physical robotic act which involves the human having
a thought, thinking about how to execute it and then actually doing it. When we
consider the mobile phone and its associated electronic emotions as an emotion-
alised social robot the distinction between human and machine becomes blurred.
The thought might well be stimulated by the electronic emotions that are associ-
ated with the mobile phone—a special relationship, a message or image held on
the device. Emotion is the glue that binds the mobile phone and its user together.

9.5 Concluding Thoughts

The emotionalised social robot discussed in this chapter is of the outcome of a

symbiotic relationship between mobile phone and its human user. Whilst the inter-
play between a mobile phone and its owner may be similar to the experience of
using a robotic device to fulfil particular tasks, there are exacting and extraordi-
nary human and emotional differences that set it apart from this mechanistic view.
To begin with the mobile phone was designed for the specific tasks of mediating
voice and data between humans; now, it is designed to deliver a host of functional-
ity and capabilities which the user can choose and shape to meet their own needs
and thus make it their own. The result is a social robot that is uniquely created
by iterative interaction between the same human and their own, personalised (and
emotionalised) mobile phone. Each person’s mobile phone becomes a one-off
emotionalised social robot; there can be no duplicates as each device is personal
114 J. Vincent

and unique to its user. If access to another person’s mobile phone is obtained the
emotionalised social robot functionality cannot be transferred to a different user.
The relationship between human and machine, the emotionalised social robot, has
become completely independent of others.
What is clear from the parallel development of social robots and wireless com-
munications is that we are heading towards an inevitable, and not so distant, con-
vergence of these technologies and their uses. Rather than developing additional
technologies it is quite likely that social robotics technologies may advance to
deliver machines that do have emotions and are in other ways more intelligent than
humans. Perhaps this is not necessary in all instances, however, as for example
the mobile phone is already a miniaturised Hugvie because the vibrations we feel
when we speak to our loved ones are felt in electronic emotions not in haptic inter-
action. The discussion draws me back again to my earlier assertion that the mobile
phone and human are as one, the emotionalised social robot that combines mobile
phone and its user is the synthesis of a highly technical machine that has capabili-
ties often far beyond the wit of its user—a human user who has come to depend
on the functionalities the mobile phone affords for the efficient running of their
day-to-day life. The process of emotionalising the mobile phone and thus its role
as a social robot has come about as a result of countless millions of human and
machine interactions, each one involving electronic emotions and each adding to
the personalisation and individualisation of the mobile phone, thereby intensifying
its status as an emotionalised social robot.

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Chapter 10
The Technologicalization of Education
in China: A Case Study of the Home–School
Communication System

Chung-tai Cheng

This article regards the social implications of human–robot interaction in educa-

tion in the specific sociocultural context of China. In particular the Home–School
Communication System is taken as a case study. The first part of the article intro-
duces how the standardized and automatized system helps student monitoring
and school communication. The opinions of the different types of users involved
(teachers, parents, and students) are then examined so as to look at the social
impact of the system for care services and for communication services between
teachers and parents. Through cross-cultural aspects concerning comparisons of
education in Chinese and in Western societies, the article suggests that such kind of
mediated communication may gradually change the role of teachers and parents in
the Chinese context.

10.1 Introduction

With regard to the use of robot technology in education, people tend to think of
“the robot as humanoid,” a smart machine that attempts to imitate the human
being and even replace human functions, such as being used to help children with
autism or in the special needs classroom (Dreyfus 2009). Other studies concerning
the power of robots focus on investigating how technological advancement may
empower people so that the overall performance of education can be improved
(Hiltz 1994). For example, Oppenheimer (1997) reports B.F. Skinner’s suggestion
that students are able to learn more efficiently with the help of teaching machines

C. Cheng (*) 
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
e-mail: cheng.chungtai@polyu.edu.hk

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 117

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_10
118 C. Cheng

and programmed instruction. In particular, with the development of the Internet,

robot technology has shifted from the material capacity for the work of humans to
many intangible aspects such as communication and emotion (Fortunati 2013). It
seems the emergence of social robots in people’s daily lives has been touted as a
powerful force that will revitalize education through distance learning, particularly
in remote areas. In other words, social robots are designed to make life easier in
ways such as providing company, monitoring, and communication.
Concerning the quality of education, some scholars hold the opposite view and
believe that good education needs face-to-face interaction between different stake-
holders. Even though virtual classrooms are able to provide a sense of “commu-
nity,” real-life interactions cannot be replicated (Fu 2013). As N. Dye, the President
of Oberlin College, asserts, “Learning is a deeply social process that requires time
and face-to-face contact. That means professors interacting with students, while the
Internet and the technology also play vital roles on campus (Paula Gordon Show
1999).” Both sides of the education/robot debate, however, presume that robot tech-
nology is only a handy tool, whose impacts are either positive or negative depend-
ing on how people make use of it. Since social robotics is being increasingly
embedded into everyday life, this standoff may overlook the interplay between
humans and robots in specific social contexts. This is because such human–robot
interaction does not only refer to a platform for human interaction, but a medium
with which humans interact (Zhao 2006). Thus, in face of the development of the
automation process in the domestic sphere, we have to take a careful look not only
at the role of social robots in daily life management but also how people perceive
and understand technologicalization in everyday life (Haddon 2003).
In China, along with the rapid economic growth after the Open Door Policy,
robotics has been appropriated from the industrial sector into different dimensions
of public and domestic spaces. For example, many metro stations in cities have
adopted ticket-vending machines; while most of the interprovincial train stations
have kept ticket sellers. Given that the indigenous Chinese culture does not have
a unique perception and understanding of the social contract between humans
and robots, the adoption of robotic technology may generate some unexpected
consequences in social life. In order to explore the arrival of robotics in Chinese
everyday life, this article aims to explore the social implications of human–
robot interaction in education in China, using a case study of the Home–School
Communication System, also called Xiaoxuetong. First, the article will introduce
how this communication system creates a standardized and automatized process
mainly for student monitoring and school communication. Second, it will look at
different stakeholders’ views on the increasingly sociotechnological-based school-
ing environment. With the advancement of computer programming and mobile
technology, the end of the article suggests that the emerging field of human–robot
interaction in education may gradually change the roles of teachers and parents as
well as the traditional Chinese understanding of “good education.”
The study is one part of the large-scale project, “Social Consequences of
Mobile Telephony in Mainland China,” funded by the Department of Applied
Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and conducted from
10  The Technologicalization of Education … 119

2008 to 2011. In addition to a national survey about mobile phone usage in six cit-
ies in China, the study conducted 20 interviews in each city, including Shanghai,
Guangzhou, Dalian, Chengdu, Lanzhou, and Nanning, induced by snowball
sampling. The discussion of the article is based on five in-depth interviews in
Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province. All interview materials have been
taped and transcribed.

10.2 School Management and the Home–School

Communication System

In 2003, one of the largest mobile service companies, China Mobile, developed an
SMS service plan, namely “Xiaoxuetong,” as a new communicative platform for
school communication between teachers and parents. But mobile phone usage in
Guangdong province in 2003 was not very popular, with a penetration rate of
around 40 % (Sina.com 2003). In 2006, the company provided a special offer and
strategically cooperated with primary and secondary schools in Guangdong to fur-
ther promote the service. The number of school partners increased from 1403 in
2006 to over 10,000 in 2010.1 According to the company’s half-yearly report in
2010, the service generated over 10 billion RMB in only 6 months. In 2011, this
service had more than 45 million parent users, 2 million teacher users, and about
90,000 schools had adopted the system. In recent years, this big market opportu-
nity has attracted several mobile service providers to further invest and invent dif-
ferent human–machine interfaces for education and e-learning services. The
tendency toward the automation process in China’s education has gradually
attracted the concern of scholars and educational practitioners regarding the
opportunities and challenges of the essence of quality education.
According to the company’s mission and values statements, Xiaoxuetong aims
to promote the all-round development of students in China and enhance their com-
prehensive ability and creativity through building a bridge for communication
between teachers and parents and creating a digitalized campus. The company
emphasizes that with the use of automation in education, teachers are able to save
more time in handling administrative work and spend more time on the prepara-
tion of teaching materials; parents can know more about what their children do
and learn in school, and students will receive a higher quality of education. The
ideal is that Xiaoxuetong is not a simple communicative tool, but rather a socio-
technical educational landscape that integrates different institutions, departments,
and groups of people in school through prescribed, automatized and standardized
communications. This involves two different methods: First, Xiaoxuetong makes
some practical parts of daily school management routines automatic, such as
tracking the attendance of students and online meal booking and menu selection

1Please see http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/2011-10-25/08056225302.shtml.

120 C. Cheng

for students; second, its central data management system also leads to the roboti-
zation of intangible parts of school communication and caring.
Generally, Xiaoxuetong’s school partners need to set up a central data manage-
ment system to store and manage students’ personal information, including class
performance and conduct, examination results, school fees, and related financial
handling records etcetera. Students will also be given an IC card as their digital
identity. When they arrive and leave school through the school main gate, the cen-
tral system will automatically report their safety to the parents through sending
an SMS, or a pop-up notification for smartphone users. With the help of the auto-
matic notification system, parents will receive daily school news and be closer to
updated school management arrangements, such as student daily homework notifi-
cation, bad weather alerts and emergency notices.
In addition, Xiaoxuetong has provided several kinds of packages for service
upgrading. School partners, teachers, and parents can buy additional services at a
lower incremental cost from the company. For example, boarding school students
are able to contact their parents by using the campus telephone service with the
IC card; parents can also arrange online revision services for their children pro-
vided by partnering schoolteachers; teachers are able to freely contact students’
parents either by using the group chat system or on an individual basis efficiently
with the help of the automated voice messaging system. Looking at these services,
the increasingly technological-based learning environment in China’s primary and
secondary schools reveals that robotic functions are no longer limited by the elec-
tronic entities, which have been embedded in everyday life “until they are indis-
tinguishable” (Weiser 1991). In many cases, people may not even be aware of the
presence of social robots, especially in terms of how they change the way people
interact and communicate.

10.3 The Social Impacts of the Automatized Schooling

Environment

Close Monitoring and Comprehensive Child-Care Services Since robotic functions

have become more invisible, ubiquitous, and inseparable with other media, their
social impact on our daily lives is almost imperceptible. When Xiaoxuetong was
first brought to market, most people showed a positive attitude toward the “help-
ful product.” Even today, while Xiaoxuetong’s school partners, teachers, and par-
ents apparently believe that the advancement of educational technology does help
improve the quality of education, they generally regard the product as an instru-
ment for communication only. In the study, most of the parent informants shared
that Xiaoxuetong could promote more comprehensive child-care services:
Parent A: Teachers (actually the central data management system) will send the kids’ meal
menu to us every day so that we’re able to know what the kids eat at school… Once my
youngest son got some red spots on his back, but he couldn’t tell me what he had taken in
10  The Technologicalization of Education … 121

the afternoon. Luckily, the service allowed me to check the meal list and help me sort out
the source of his allergy.
Parent B: My son always persuades me that he has grown up now. He said that he
could go to school by himself as he was 10 years old. But I am quite worried that it may
not be safe for him on the way back from school, and I think he is too young to have his
own mobile phone. Fortunately, the Xiaoxuetong service will send me notification when
he has arrived safely at school. I don’t need to worry anymore.

The automatic safe arrival, emergency alert, and school notice systems really help
school staff—particularly in primary schools—improve child monitoring. Most of
the schools in China offer large-class teaching, in which each class has more than
40 students and at most only two class teachers. The student–teacher ratio and
large-class size mean the teachers find it difficult to take care of all of the students.
With the help of these systems, teachers really feel less worried about students’
physical safety, and are able to complete various routine administrative tasks in a
more efficient way. In addition, because of rapid urbanization after the economic
reforms, working parents also love having such child-monitoring services avail-
able. For those rural laborers who have migrated to the coastal areas, the systems
really help relieve their burden while they are dwelling in the cities far away from
their “hometown” and family support.
Nevertheless, those families who have sufficient manpower to take care of their
own children, tend to have negative comments about the Xiaoxuetong system and
its charges. Some parents complain that they were forced to buy the services, s­ aying
they did not need it but had no choice. Some also complained that the automatic
notification system was not reliable at all, and would even send some “useless”
­messages in the middle of the night (Sina.com 2011). As parent C shared:
The system will send you some general information messages. You may receive nothing
for a few days, but sometimes receive several messages at the same time—I don’t know
why, maybe it gets jammed. What’s more, although the system helps teachers process
and send out students’ grades and the arrangement of homework, the teachers still need
to input the data themselves. Just like in my son’s class, if the teacher is responsible, you
will get updated information. Otherwise, you might just receive useless messages.

In order to motivate teachers to fully utilize the services and render its services
worthwhile, the company has implemented award/repayment schemes as incen-
tives. For example, parents are allowed to check the total number of messages sent
by different schools in the same area or the number of messages sent by individual
teachers at the same school, online. These statistics are also listed and ranked on
the Internet. Such an arrangement not only creates peer pressure amongst teachers,
but it also becomes an informal criterion for parents as well as school management
teams to grade and monitor teachers’ performance. As class teachers may receive
performance awards or bonuses from schools, and even from the company, some
of them are eager to show they are working hard by sending messages for all kinds
of school business.
Social Comparison Through Xiaoxuetong The unintended consequence of
teachers’ mass messaging is to foster unhealthy competition amongst ­ parents
and children. Parent C pointed out that apart from the automatic homework
122 C. Cheng

notification, some class teachers would demand parents’ attention on students’ per-
formance by sending mass messages:
22/1/2009 [16:45]: Students have to finish two pages of the English copybook and one
handwritten page and prepare for Chinese dictation for the coming Monday.
22/1/2009 [17:02]: Miss Chen found that Xiao Ding and Xiao Hui kept talking in the
English lesson.
23/1/2009 [17:15]: Please remember to bring money for meal services tomorrow.
25/1/2009 [17:58]: Xiao Mui improved a lot in the Maths exam; while Xiao Tian and
Xiao Ming received a fail grade.

Disclosure of student records to third parties is undoubtedly considered as a matter

of personal privacy in Western societies. This is because children are regarded and
treated as “individuals,” whose personal feelings and rights need to be respected
and protected. But the situation in China is more complicated. As mentioned
above, in relational terms, the characteristics of Chinese social relationships are
the opposite of the Western concept of the ‘autonomous self’. Chinese people tend
to be socially and psychologically dependent on others according to the differen-
tiated and graded social relations. In Chinese social life, such interpersonal rela-
tionships based on particularistic criteria or ties, also known as “guanxi,” are of
paramount importance (King 1994). They not only serve for group and “individ-
ual” identification, but also generate different sets of moral guidelines for social
interaction. Therefore, the practice of an in-class and examination performance
notification system unexpectedly encourages intensive and even unrealistic “inter-
personal comparisons” (in Chinese “Panbi”) amongst parents and students.
In children’s education, for example, Chinese parents have the rights and
responsibilities to look after their children in all aspects of life. They will also
try to provide what children need as best as they can. The most common way for
them to show their love to their children is to work, rather than focusing on psy-
chological and emotional support. On the other hand, children are expected to
obey their parents, strive to meet their expectations and repay parents’ kindness
with filial piety in the future. As a Chinese classical text, Book of Filial Piety (in
Chinese “Xiaoji”), suggests, “Our body, to every hair and bit of skin, is received
by us from our parents, and we must not presume to injure or wound them. This
is the beginning of filial piety.” This means the ideal of this parent–child relation-
ship in Chinese society is reliant and permanently based on reciprocal obligation.
Under such family-oriented relationships, individual rights, and private emotions
are usually insignificant. It is common for parents to search children’s school bags,
or freely enter their bedrooms without knocking in the name of “good intentions.”
Unfortunately, in practice the family connection probably brings too much
parental and family pressure on children. Since such guanxi is closely linked to
“face” (in Chinese “mianzi”) which corresponds to either a person’s social image
or the respect in which they are held, parents and other senior family members
tend to set high expectations for children and neglect their feelings. As a Chinese
saying goes, “Every family has its own problems and a sad tale to tell. Nobody
10  The Technologicalization of Education … 123

wants his or her family’s skeleton to fall out of the cupboard.” If a Chinese child
does something wrong or commits crimes, his/her parents may be accused of “bad
parenting.” As a result, for the teacher users, using Xiaoxuetong as a quasi-robot
for mediated communication enables them to avoid uneasy embarrassment when
they deal with difficult parents. As teacher A commented: “Sometimes it’s hard to
point out explicitly what sort of problems the students have. Actually, the reason
why some students are slow to improve grades isn’t due to the students’ lack of
interest, but to their parents’ lack of time. Although parents may have their own
difficulties, it’s quite hard to remind them again and again in person.” Teacher B
shared the same view that some parents might feel sensitive and concerned when
she sent written memos to them, while it seemed less formal to communicate with
parents through Xiaoxuetong.
On the other hand, the practice of reporting students’ examination results
through Xiaoxuetong unexpectedly reinforces the overwhelming pragmatic con-
cern in China’s education, which has already been criticized for emphasizing
marks and grades too heavily. Due to “face consciousness”, Chinese parents and
relatives are proud to share the honor and success of family members, such as get-
ting good examination results, studying in top universities, making a lot of money,
and other observable achievements. Although the automatized communication sys-
tem helps teachers and parents closely monitor children at a lower cost, it creates
a sociotechnological landscape that intensifies family and social pressure as “moti-
vation drivers” to discipline and punish students for their poor performance. For
example, student A commented, “I really suffer from a lot of pressure during the
exam period. My parents work so hard for me. I really don’t want my mum to feel
disappointed.” Student B also sighed that he was always warned by his mother that
if he got poor examination results, she would cut his pocket money as a punish-
ment for making her lose face.
These examples reveal that although Xiaoxuetong allows teachers and parents
to communicate electronically, this new way of social interaction unintentionally
reinforces the collective characteristics of Chinese social organization. As Chinese
society’s hierarchy is legitimate and an individual’s conformity to group norms is
significant in the family-based social provision, Chinese people are encouraged
to identify their social position by comparing with others’ material possessions
(Chen and Prendergast 2007). Xiaoxuetong, therefore, is more than a communica-
tive tool, as it not only involves the automatized process of school communica-
tion but establishes a new field for social comparison of goods in Chinese society.
Previously, there was still room for both students and parents to hide “bad news”;
while the networked school community makes it more likely that disclosure and
close monitoring inevitably generate unnecessary and intangible pressure on stu-
dents as well as excessive competition between parents. As a result, the learning
environment is becoming more materialistic.
The Distortion of the Role of Teachers and the Value of Education in China
Although Xiaoxuetong provides a cheap and efficient way of child monitoring for
both large-class teachers and working parents, it unexpectedly reinforces the prac-
tice of social comparison amongst Chinese people alongside the development of
124 C. Cheng

the increasingly technological-based learning environment. At the level of social

development, this phenomenon recalls a controversial discussion regarding the
rationale of education in China, especially after the rapid economic growth over
the past three decades. Since cultural practices are embedded and pervasive in eve-
ryday life, we can only feel and articulate their differences by contrasting the dif-
ferent styles with each other. In other words, our understanding of social robotics
and its application in the educational system reflects different cultural styles; while
the general cultural styles of education also condition how robotic automation in
education is perceived and adopted. In education, many cultural anthropologists
have studied and compared the differences of formal schooling and nonformal
schooling between Chinese and Western societies, emphasizing that the Western
one has a relatively clear distinction between the functions of school and of family.
In Western societies, children are generally expected to be independent and
learn how to deal with different types of people in accordance with different social
norms in different social institutions (Fei 1992). Schools themselves are thus per-
ceived as one of the major organizations mainly for socialization (Hsu 1981).
During the learning process, students are encouraged to develop their own dis-
tinctive personalities and learn how to interact well with each other. For exam-
ple, American students are expected to express themselves and own ideas, and
learn to take responsibility for their actions; while American teachers are like
facilitators in the classroom, who encourage the students to do their own thinking.
Gradually, students are able to learn their role and responsibilities in a variety of
social circumstances and to recognize the difference between private and public
life. In other words, the role of educational practitioners is to inspire and encour-
age the students to strive for their own greatness and potential. As Yeats (1996),
the famous Irish poet said, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of
a fire.”
In Chinese society, however, the functions of family and school are not clearly
defined and well structured. The schooling system is usually treated as an exten-
sion of the family regarding human development. Traditionally, it significantly
focuses on the human subjective ethical spirit in enhancing family and then
national cohesion. As the Three Character Classic (in Chinese “Sanzi Jing”), an
ancient Chinese text of the embodiment of Confucianism for formal education at
home, said, “When young, study; when grown up, perform. Influence the sover-
eign above, benefit the people below (Yellowbridge 2003)”. The traditional ideal
of Chinese education emphasizes group conformity so as to achieve a great united
and harmonious society (in Chinese “datong shehui”). In education, therefore,
Chinese people tend to have a unique and serious social perception toward the role
of educational practitioners. As a Chinese saying said, “Once a teacher, you are
a father figure for a whole lifetime.” Teachers in China are usually trained to be
“role models,” being responsible for setting guidelines and instructions through
lecture. Students not only have to learn to respect authority but to try to engage
in a strong and long-term teacher–student relationship. Thus, Chinese education
seldom emphasizes students’ self-expression, and so the Chinese child tends to
be more suppressed and attempts to tone down his or her own desire in order to
10  The Technologicalization of Education … 125

transcend the greater things in life (Hsu 1983). Chinese students are expected to
acquire knowledge through standardized, assigned and even “official” textbooks.
Through this cross-cultural comparison of education, we can have a deeper
understanding of the co-construction of social robotics and culture in the Chinese
context. Education in most cultural styles not only allows people to equip them-
selves by following some procedure or through imitation, but also teaches them
how to acquire the style of their culture through socialization (Dreyfus 2009). The
above sketch of Western and Chinese cultures of education suggests that the lat-
ter style seeks collective efficacy and social integration; while the former strives
to develop individuality. Thus, although the promise of robotic communication
technology enables school members to keep connected and build closer relation-
ships with others, the style of Chinese culture governs how the technological-
ized schooling environment is being perceived and shaped. Since Chinese society
emphasizes collectivism and pragmatism, Xiaoxuetong is commonly regarded as
a simple communicative device, particularly for teachers and parents. But if we
look closely not only at students’ comments but also at their understanding of the
meaning of being “good” teachers, it is interesting to notice the normative implica-
tions of the automatized system of school communication. For example, student C
commented,
I hate Xiaoxuetong very much as my class teacher likes telling on me by sending “secret
messages” to my mum. Once my friend and I were playing for fun, but she told my mum
that I was fighting at school. I feel so aggrieved!

Contrarily, student D loved her teacher very much and said,

All my classmates feel happy to have such a nice and considerate teacher because she
never speaks badly of us but only sends good news to our parents.

These cases highlight how the Chinese evaluation of teachers is strengthened by

the automatized communicative system. It seems Chinese students show less con-
cern following the correct rules for promoting self-efficacy and one’s own abili-
ties. Rather, Chinese students’ understanding of “good” teachers mainly focuses
on the interpersonal characteristics of comprehensive caring and high compli-
ance. Therefore, since Xiaoxuetong reinforces the practice of social comparison
amongst parents as well as teachers, the role and responsibilities of “good” teach-
ers may become exaggerated.

10.4 Concluding Remarks

With the advancement of broadband technology, various aspects of education are

undergoing the processes of automatization and robotification in China. This study
has argued that to understand the effectiveness and adoptability of robotification, it
is important to look at users’ understanding and interpretations toward the increas-
ingly automatized and textually mediated social world. Especially in those devel-
oping countries, the interaction between technology and the indigenous culture
126 C. Cheng

may bring forth some unexpected social consequences. In China, the rapid growth
of the economy after the Open Door policies contributes to a significant improve-
ment in people’s living conditions. The adoption of new information and com-
munication technology that paves the way for social robotics has already spread
to many domains of life. One of them is Xiaoxuetong, a matrix for school com-
munication analyzed in this chapter, that helps teachers and parents better moni-
tor students’ performance. In terms of child caring, Xiaoxuetung has turned out
to be a mostly affordable and practical tool to improve the efficiency of school
management. However, its automatized communication features have unexpect-
edly encouraged the practice of social comparison between parents and teachers.
Furthermore, such a sociotechnological network strengthens a culture of suppres-
sion and monitoring of students. This phenomenon reinforces the role of Chinese
teachers in a more pragmatic style in school, and as a result may promote materi-
alistic concerns in the Chinese educational system. As new automatized and robot-
ized technologies are introduced in Chinese schools, these and other unexpected
and potentially counterproductive effects should be taken into consideration.

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8(3):401–419
Chapter 11
Fashion Tech and Robotics

Elda Danese

Many of the relatively recent experiments and realisations in the field of “fashion
tech”—a combination of fashion design with engineering, science and interaction/
user experience design—try to shape some sort of artificially intelligent systems
around the human body, which in many cases move, breath and react to the envi-
ronment around them. Although far from the social aim of health biorobotics, such
researches have many elements in common with the latest advancements in the
area of robotics related to the body, where the focus is often to enhance the wear-
ability of the body-related devices, quite often through the employment of “smart
textiles.” The aim of this chapter is therefore to describe and analyse these parallel
and partially intersecting developments, by presenting a review of the main pro-
jects recently realised by artists and designers who have collaborated with scien-
tists and engineers towards the creation of “robotic dresses.”

11.1 Introduction

Fashion has always had a close relationship with technology: The oldest and most
obvious demonstration of this link lies in the constant innovation, since the eight-
eenth century, in the production of machinery and the implementation of processes
for the manufacture of textiles. In recent years, new textiles have been produced
and used in many different fields because of their lightness and strength, and also
thanks to the fact that they could include various kinds of micro and nanotechnolo-
gies and incorporate conductive materials. In this field of research a new class of

E. Danese (*) 
IUAV University, Venice, Italy
e-mail: danese@iuav.it

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 129

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_11
130 E. Danese

fabrics has emerged, the “smart textiles,” which are engineered in order to react
to changes in physical and environmental conditions. In many types of smart tex-
tiles, the fabric supports (or is made from) Phase Change Materials, electronic cir-
cuits, microcontrollers, sensors, etc. Inevitably, the experimentation in the sphere
of “techno-textiles” is leading to the design of clothes that can be considered as
peculiar kinds of machines.
Since worn fabrics are close to the human body, the field of “intelligent cloth-
ing” is advancing and expanding very rapidly, aiming to achieve new functional
performances, chiefly in areas such as health, work, sport and the military. In this
way the capabilities and the aspect of the body are changed, often improved, some-
how like the performance of a machine would be. At the same time we have seen
the development of many experimental projects, and some actual realisations, of
robots trying to imitate the abilities and the appearance of human beings. Androids
have a long tradition in the imagery and in the history of inventions: Recently,
however, there can be detected a tendency to modify their artificial essence through
the use of soft materials, therefore altering their metallic and geometric qualities
to achieve more empathetic, naturalistic form. In these ways, as stressed by many
scholars, the boundary between artificial and natural is more and more difficult
to recognise (Danese 2003; Fortunati et al. 2003; Sugiyama and Vincent 2013).
Moreover, this relationship has somewhat evolved, in the sense that technology is
not only considered useful for functional tools, but it also has become fashionable:
Hence the design of dresses that highlight artificiality in every direction, and that
look spectacular because they appear closer to the inorganic and to the imagery of
the machine. Finally, the interest of many researchers is increasingly focused on
the emotive aspects of machines, studying the intimate relationship between their
owner and them, designing their form in order to communicate, not just visually or
phonetically, but through all the senses. From this point of view, as well as being
close to the skin and communicating emotions, therefore, these new technological
artefacts show an obvious association with fashion.
The main elements of the emerging field of “fashion tech”—a combination of
fashion design with engineering, science and interaction/user experience design—
can be exemplified in the projects carried out at the V2 Institute for the Unstable
Media in Rotterdam, which in February 2014 hosted a lecture on “Robotic
Fashion and Intimated Interfaces.” A second exemplar can be found in the 2012
“Technosensual” exhibition at the Wiener Museumquartier, which looked at the
world of technologically enhanced garments and raised questions on how such
wearable technologies may impact the social, emotional and cultural layers of
society.
With the aim of exploring these subjects, the chapter reviews some interesting
research programmes, designs and actual realisations that in different ways incor-
porate elements related to the fields of fashion tech and robotics. The exploration
of these themes has been structured into five sections: (a) Wearable robots, deal-
ing with various soft exoskeletons projects, mostly aiming at supporting everyday
activities of people with disabilities; (b) hiding/showing, where the main subject
is the design of clothes or other “soft” equipment capable of generating some
11  Fashion Tech and Robotics 131

form of camouflage; (c) protection/aggression, covering the design of garments

that enhance the degree of personal security and protection against various possi-
ble forms of aggression or attack; (d) communicate/express, discussing the devel-
opment of garments capable of altering some of their characteristics in response
to other people’s presence or to the wearer’s changing emotions; (e) shifting sil-
houettes, examining how some artists and fashion designers have interpreted the
theme of “kinetic garments” or “transforming dresses.”

11.2 Wearable Robots

The Robot Companions for Citizens Manifesto1 reports some interesting new con-
ceptualizations in the field of robotic technologies. One among them is “the
‘Robot suit,’ that is a wearable robot that provides support to people when moving
and doing everyday life activities” (Fortunati 2013, p. 125). In recent years this
area has seen various interesting research achievements and also a few actual reali-
sations. The Japanese company Cyberdyne, for example, is producing a wearable
robotic suit called HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb), presented as the world’s first
cyborg-type robot—leading to a fusion of man, machine and information—by
which a wearer’s bodily functions can be highly improved, supported and
enhanced. A similar device, manufactured by the Israeli company Argo Medical
Technologies, is “ReWalk,” a wearable robotic exoskeleton that provides powered
hip and knee motion to enable individuals with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) to stand
upright and walk.
A number of other experimental studies and projects are being carried out
around the world by research institutions and companies—frequently in partner-
ship—in the field of wearable exoskeletons, often relying on different designs
for their prototypes. These include: The Berkeley-based Ekso Bionics; the
BioRobotics Institute of the “Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa;” the American
firm Raytheon Sarcos; the Biomechatronis Group at the MIT or the “Exo-Legs”
project (coordinated by the University of Gävle in Sweden).
Of particular interest for the topic discussed in this article is the soft robotic exo-
skeleton suit recently developed at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired
Engineering of Harvard University. The lightweight “Soft Exosuit” is designed to
overcome the challenges of traditional heavier exoskeleton systems, such as power-
hungry battery packs and rigid components that can interfere with natural joint
movement. It is made of soft, functional textiles woven together into a piece of

1The Robot Companions for Citizens (RCC), or RoboCom, is a large scale European interdis-

ciplinary research and development initiative, whose aim is the creation of a new generation of
robots that will co-exist and work together with humans. The whole programme is coordinated
by Paolo Dario (director of the BioRobotics Institute of the “Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di
Pisa”) and involves 96 principal investigators from 73 Institutions.
132 E. Danese

smart clothing that is pulled on like a pair of pants and is intended to be worn under
a regular gear. Through a biologically inspired design, the suit mimics the action of
the leg muscles and tendons when a person walks, and provides small but carefully
timed assistance at the joints of the leg without restricting the wearer’s movement.2
Most of the previous examples are related with problems affecting disabled peo-
ple or with specific operational tasks that need an enhancement of the body’s power:
The possibility to move, to improve one’s strength or to control some physical func-
tions. While this is a crucial field of research, there are other aims that have emerged
as specific applications of technology to garments. In particular, all the examples
described in this paper demonstrate a connection with the communication aspects of
clothing or—and this is another important subject—with what could be interpreted
as its opposite, that is the wish to hide, the desire of not being controlled.

11.3 Hiding/Showing

What can be seen as the obsessive and increasing presence of systems of video
surveillance in public spaces could generate, in some people, a willingness to
escape from this form of exercise of power, to become actually invisible.
Camouflage clothing has typically relied on the use of colour and patterns to con-
ceal the person wearing it. By exploring in depth the field of “optical camouflage,”
a Tokyo University team led by Prof. Susumu Tachi3 has developed the “invisibil-
ity cloak,” a coat that seems to be transparent and appears to make its wearer invis-
ible. Designed mostly for medical and military applications, the “invisibility
cloak” is in fact a screen in which the images shot by a camera placed behind the
person wearing it are projected on the front of the coat, thus giving the impression
of seeing through the body. The use of a technique called Retro-reflective
Projection Technology (RPT), which employs materials covered with very small
beads that reflect the light only in the same direction as it is coming (the same type
of material applied to road signs), makes the projected image bright and clearly
visible even in daylight.4
Another illustration of the development of clothes that hide the identity of the
wearer from invisible and ubiquitous eyes is represented by the products of the
English design company Vexed Generation, that started its first collection in 1995.
Its aim was to design a range of street clothing that met both the practical needs
and political concerns of the “urban generation,” expressing concerns over the

2See image at: http://www.slashgear.com/soft-exosuit-gets-darpa-favor-will-give-soldiers-super-

human-legs-12346076/. Accessed 15 Jan 2015.
3Founding director and fellow of the Robotics Society of Japan, professor Tachi’s research

encompasses robotics, augmented reality, virtual reality, and haptics.

4See image at: http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/scientists-develop-light-bend-

ing-invisibility-cloak-that-works-across-several-frequencies. Accessed 15 Jan 2015.

11  Fashion Tech and Robotics 133

prevalent use of video surveillance: Their “Ninja Hood” and “Ninja High-Neck”
tops, for example, helped conceal the identity of the people who would wear
them. In their “See And Be Seen” Collection, instead, the approach was to enforce
the garments’ visibility in relation to the wearer’s anonymity by inserting high-
reflective panels into their overcoat and full body jumpsuits: The reflective panels
shone as bright and fluorescent lights and thus masked the wearer even more fully
in the contrasting folds of dark fabric, while extra padding reinforced the elbows
and knees in the event of an accident or an altercation.

11.4 Protection/Aggression

Clothes typically protect us, define our identity and communicate to the others.
Clothes, however, can also defend us from attacks, not just in wars or combat situ-
ations, but also from the unexpected dangers that people fear in modern city, the
aggression of chemical substances in the air and the violence of unknown people.
To many people, perceptions of rising crime, inner-city violence and the threat of
terrorism make protection a key concern. For many years scientists and research-
ers have been developing textiles that create protective clothing for a range of
applications, and many of these innovations have the potential to form part of the
wardrobe of the future. Dutch designer Tim Smit, for example, created the “Urban
Security Suit” to insulate the wearer against pollution, airborne toxins and poison-
ous gases: The garment is made with a Neoprene shell for insulation and shock
protection, and is lined with body-moulded slash-proof Kevlar that protects the
wearer from attack.
A more active aspect of the above-mentioned concerns, on the other hand, is
exemplified by the aggressive function assigned to some clothes that are specifi-
cally designed to harm the people that try to touch us or hurt us. Different types of
technological systems can be integrated into garments in order to obtain specific
effects in such a direction: Soft circuits, conductive fibres and pressure-sensitive
panels make it possible, for instance, to create clothing that can react and respond
to impact and force. MIT researcher Adam Whitton has partnered with fashion
designer Yolita Nugent to focus on personal security issues affecting especially
women, devising items of clothing that sense contact and register the amount of
force used. That led to the development of the “No Contact Jacket” which—when
turned on through an internal switch—creates on the external surface an elec-
tric field capable of delivering a high-intensity non-lethal charge that causes any
attacker to immediately withdraw contact, while simultaneously protecting the
wearer from any electrical charge and allowing him or her time to escape.
In a similar but definitely more harmless way, the “Spike Jacket,” designed by
Nancy Tilbury, aims at amplifying the wearer’s perception of his or her personal
space: The jacket’s integrated technology system senses when other people come
too close, immediately prompting a system of textile cabling and silicone light dif-
fusers to flash repeatedly as a form of warning signal.
134 E. Danese

11.5 Communicate/Express

Another quite active line of research focuses on the possibility for the garment to
cause surprise or to express emotions by changing their passive status of objects.
Therefore, their fabric may light up, move, swell up, become a screen or release
perfumes. The aim seems to be the improving capability of our clothes to change
their status in order to communicate to the senses.
Barbara Layne is the Director of “Studio subTela” at the Hexagram Institute
of Concordia University (Canada), which focuses on the development of intelli-
gent cloth structures for the creation of artistic, performing and functional textiles.
Natural materials are woven in alongside microcomputers and sensors to create
surfaces that are receptive and responsive to external stimuli. In 2007 the Studio
realised “Jacket Antics,” two garments where traditional black linen yarns are
woven alongside light emitting diodes, microcontrollers and sensors. Their dis-
tinctive characteristic is that they rely on the act of holding hands by two wear-
ers in order to present a range of dynamically encoded texts and designs scrolling
through the LED array on each of the backs. If the wearers do hold hands, the
LED arrays presents a synchronous message that scrolls from one person to the
other, but when the wearers let go of their hands, the message changes to individ-
ual and different themes. In these animated cloth displays, the capacity for inter-
activity extends the narrative qualities of fabric and provides new possibilities for
dynamic social interactions.
As wearable systems identify bodily sensations and trigger responses, some
emotions could be processed as a type of computation that translates into action.
Philips Design was one of the first research organisations to combine wearable
technology and sensory intelligence. Among the various prototypes of dynamic
garments developed in its laboratories one can cite the “SKIN Bubelle,” described
as an “exploration into emotional sensing.” The garment is formed by a series of
bubble-like shapes that glow individually at an intensity related to the wearer’s
movements and changes in skin temperature. To that purpose, a series of biometric
sensors collect data such as hearth rate, respiration and galvanic skin response, and
this information is then visualised by altering the intensity, shape and colours gen-
erated by 18 miniature projectors located between the layers of the garment. The
effect creates a visual representation of the wearer’s emotional state and physical
responses.5
In an analogous project, Korean designer and researcher Eunjeong Jeon has
brought natural fibres and technology together to create “Trans-For-M-otion,” a
conceptual prototype of a ‘kinetic garment’ that morphs into different silhouettes.
As the designer states, the prototype “is based on investigating the bodily aspects
of people’s interaction with clothing, … to understand four basic emotional move-
ments: ‘towards out,’ ‘toward self,’ ‘away from self (against other)’ and ‘away

5See video at: http://vimeo.com/32964255. Accessed 15 Jan 2015.

11  Fashion Tech and Robotics 135

from other’.” (Jeon 2009). The outfit is crafted from offcuts of felted wool embed-
ded with wearable technology, and it is designed with regular three-dimensional
geometric polygon-shaped units, with air trapped on one side and flower-shaped
pockets on the other. Sensors monitor muscle tension, breathing, heart rate and
temperature to detect when the wearer experiences discomfort, and the garment
reacts automatically by closing around the wearer to foster a greater sense of secu-
rity. As a result, the shape of the silhouette relates directly to wearers’ sense of
emotional and physical well-being.
Jenny Tillotson—reader in Sensory Fashion at Central St. Martins College of
Art and Design in London—is a pioneer of wearable, scent-output systems and
aroma technology, whose interests centre on finding novel ways of creating mood-
enhancing responsive fashion and textiles, using the olfactory sense as a commu-
nication tool. One of her experimental works, the “Smart Second Skin Dress,” also
known as “Scentorgan Dress,” is a prototype garment that delivers aromas to dif-
ferent parts of the body. Like the human body, the garment has its own circulation
systems, being cabled with “veins”—in this instance, medical tubing fastened at
the end with surgical clamps—which hold coloured liquids of different aromas. A
small pump mimics the function of the heart and blood vessels to emit scents that
create and enhance the wearer’s olfactory experience. In this and other analogue
projects, “the aim is to go one step beyond passive sensory systems … via the
integration of wearable technologies in smart textiles that not only offer function
to fashion, but are designed for psychological end benefit to reduce stress” (Oliver
et al. 2009, p. 10).

11.6 Shifting Silhouettes

Sweden-based fashion designer Julia Krantz’s inspiration seems to emerge from

biomimicry, robotics, genetical modification and combat uniforms. She created
her “Shell Collection” with garments comprising translucent fabrics draped over
metal frames, shaping the fashioned body into otherworldly silhouettes, even giv-
ing it an insectoid appearance. In another garment by the same designer, dubbed
“Whiteness,” the body is covered in rigid panels that suggest robotic body parts
more than traditional garments. Tube-like structures tracing the shoulders and
torso suggest technological circuitry, while the overlapping panels appear ready to
morph into new shapes.
Australian born Lucy McRae is an artist and designer whose works recon-
figure the shape of the human body. Taking the human form as her starting point,
McRae designs wearable artefacts that dramatically transform the body’s natural
silhouette, and create coatings that resurface the skin. By using textiles and other
fibre-based forms, or low-tech substances such as foam, feathers, paper and wood,
McRae crafts wearable structures for the body to inhabit. A typical example of such
kind of structures, transforming the body into sculptural shapes, is “Transnatural,”
136 E. Danese

a honeycomb-like textile mesh, made from the same thermoplastic employed for
masks restraining the patients’ body parts during MRI scanning.
The latest realisation of Ying Gao, fashion designer and professor at Université
du Québec à Montréal, has been a series of kinetic garments, whose aesthetic
attributes change and adjust in reaction to sound: The “Incertitudes” series, con-
sisting of dresses in white and silver coloured fabric covered with dressmaker
pins. The garment is realised through the combined use of quite different mediums
and technologies: PVDF, a thermoplastic fluoropolymer having a strong degree of
piezoelectricity, which makes the material compress when exposed to an electric
field; a series of microelectronic devices, fully integrated into the fabric; thousands
of dressmaker pins, outwardly protruding from the textile’s surface. Through the
interaction of these components, the whole dress and its metallic accessories move
and respond to the level of noise and the voice of people in their surroundings.
Their fluent motion generates a wave-like flux, contracting and expanding the
entire wearable object.6 One can say that in this case the clothing’s original func-
tion is transposed into a unique aesthetic application, embodying art, fashion and
technology. Seeing the reaction of the dress to the sound induces emotion giving
the illusion of an effective communication.
Diana Eng’s 2010 “Fairytale Fashion” is a collection of clothing that uses tech-
nology, math, and science to create functioning designs that transform shape and
change colour. Her research into integrating deployable structures (i.e., structures
that can change shape so as to significantly change their size) within fashion is
exemplified in the “Inflatable Dress,” made from cream silk chiffon draped over
inflatable plastic forms and white silk flowers: When the inflatable are turned on,
the dress shows a complete and impressive transformation.
Such a project clearly brings to mind one of the proposals put forward by the
famous fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, who has always been interested in the
movement and transformation of garments: In his 2003 collection “Kinship
Journeys,” in particular, he presented a series of dresses where inflating airbags
emerged from the skirts’ hems. As an immigrant from Cyprus to London,
Chalayan is quite sensitive to the subjects of transit, exile and nomadism, and
many of his collections make reference to voyage and travel, particularly air travel.
In his “Echoform” collection (1999), for example, he presented some leather gar-
ments inspired by car interiors to represent speed, adding padded headrests to the
dresses using the same technology as in car manufacturing. His “Aeroplane” series
(2000), on the other hand, was designed using the same composite technology
used by aircraft engineers. Glass fibre and resin were moulded into two smooth,
glossy, pink-coloured front and back panels that fastened together by metal clips.7
Referring to a quite similar outfit presented by Chalayan in the same year, where

6See image at: http://inspirationist.net/incertitudes-sound-activated-clothing-by-ying-gao/. Accessed

15 Jan 2015.
7See image at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2006.251a-c. Accessed 15 Jan 2015.
11  Fashion Tech and Robotics 137

the rigid side and rear flaps could be lifted, by means of a remote control, to reveal
a froth of pink tulle underneath, Quinn (2002) wrote:
The structural architecture of the Remote Control Dress echoes the attributes of a fash-
ioned body rather than an organic body. The structure of the dress forms an exoskeleton
around the body incorporating elements of body consciousness … As the dress interacts
with its immediate environment, or performs manoeuvres originating from a command
centre … makes it clear that the fashioned mechanisation of the body and the interaction
of both into a larger technological system produces a whole new range of practices, pos-
sibilities and aesthetics that transgresses the body/machine boundary. (Quinn 2002, pp.
367–368).

In a correlated proposal, presented in the same year, some dresses incorporated a

seat, a headrest and two armrests, all connected to a metallic spine on the back,
creating a sort of prosthesis to the body. Finally, in his 2007 “One Hundred and
Eleven” collection many suggestions were made in the area of “transform-
ing dresses,” where complex computerised systems of tubes, wires and motors,
attached to the outer layer of the garment, were utilised in order to completely
alter its shape.

11.7 Final Remarks

In summing up the preceding sections, the first aspect to be pointed out is that
very few of the these “robotic dresses” have been conceived for being normally
worn and even less to be put into production: Some of them can be considered as
products being still at an experimental/preliminary stage, while others can be seen
as some sort of artistic or stylistic propositions. As Lamontagne writes, referring to
the projects presented at the “Technosensual” exhibition, “very few of the featured
garments could function aesthetically or mechanically off the catwalk, or outside a
gallery setting.” Nevertheless, they all “raise deeper questions about our relation-
ship to technology as it ubiquitously and seamlessly bleeds into objects of quotid-
ian interaction, exchange and expression.” (Lamontagne 2012, p. 15).
In the projects of many of the mentioned designers, in fact, the technology
acquires many visual, sensory and emotional functions. The artificial light that
radiate from many garments is a technological quality that transforms the body in
a luminous immaterial essence. In some cases, the complexity of the pattern and
the presence of pipes and rigid scaffolding evoke inorganic forms or the exoskel-
eton of an animal. It is important to stress the fact that, from this point of view,
there seems to be a sort of exchange between the traditional image of fashion, on
the one hand, and the most advanced robotic technology: The latter seems to point
mostly towards the organic and human aspects, while the described kind of fash-
ion tends to relinquish the supple and flat surfaces in favour of three-dimensional,
sometimes sharp-edged shapes, pointing generally to some sort of non-human or
post-human representation.
138 E. Danese

Finally, most of the reviewed garments, as we have shown, make use of new
technologies, employ “intelligent textiles” and are equipped with advanced com-
ponents in such a way as to become sophisticated systems (or machines) that react
to/interact with the wearer but also with other people’s presence, observation, talk,
touch, etc. Therefore, by rephrasing and modifying a frequently cited characteriza-
tion of social robots expressed by Shanyang Zhao,8 we could say that most of
these new “robotic dresses” are both a medium with which humans interact and a
medium through which humans interact.

References

Danese E (2003) Soft machine. In: Katz JE (ed) Machines that become us: the social context of
personal communication technology. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, pp 267–276
Fortunati L, Katz JE, Riccini R (eds) (2003) Mediating the human body: technology, communi-
cation, and fashion. Laurence Erlbaum, Mahwah
Fortunati L (2013) Afterword: robot conceptualizations between continuity and innovation. In:
Sugiyama S, Vincent J (eds) Social robots and emotion: transcending the boundary between
humans and ICTs. Intervalla 1, pp 116–129
Jeon E (2009) Object playing with movement: a source of comfort and enjoyment. Internal
Paper, Department of Design, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia
Lamontagne V (2012) Exhibition review. In: Wipprecht A, Friesinger G (eds) Technosensual:
where fashion meets technology. Catalogue of the exhibition at the MuseumsQuartier, Edition
Mono/Monochrom, Wien, pp 15–17
Oliver R, Tillotson J, Toomey A (2009) Bioengineered textiles and nonwovens—the convergence
of bio-miniaturisation and electroactive conductive polymers for assistive healthcare, portable
power and design-led wearable technology. J Fiber Bioeng Infomatics 2(1):1–13
Quinn B (2002) A note: Hussein Chalayan. Fashion technology. Fashion Theory 6(4):359–368
Sugiyama S, Vincent J (eds) (2013) Social robots and emotion: transcending the boundary
between humans and ICTs, Intervalla 1
Zhao S (2006) Humanoid social robots as a medium of communication. New Media Soc
8(3):401–419

8“Humanoid social robots … are not a medium through which humans interact, but rather a

medium with which humans interact” (Zhao 2006, p. 402).

Chapter 12
Conclusions

Jane Vincent, Sakari Taipale, Bartolomeo Sapio, Giuseppe Lugano

and Leopoldina Fortunati

Although the topic of social robots has enjoyed great success in scholarly
­literature since 2000, this book contributes new knowledge to the debate that has
been generated from diverse sources. It includes authors who come from many
different countries delivering robust, quantitative studies on the attitudes and
perceptions towards robots in Europe and North America together with a series
of more qualitative research projects and experiments from Europe and Asia.
Furthermore, it includes a good mix of disciplines: from communication to social
policy, from sociology to industrial design, from philosophy to social psychology.
Collaborating together all these disciplines have delivered integrated knowledge
and a variety of studies regarding social robots.
In particular this volume has introduced and articulated a sociopolitical analy-
sis of the penetration of social robots in the reproduction sphere, and in so doing

J. Vincent (*) 
University of Surrey, Surrey, UK
e-mail: j.vincent@surrey.ac.uk
S. Taipale 
University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
e-mail: sakari.taipale@jyu.fi
B. Sapio 
Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, Rome, Italy
e-mail: bart@fub.it
G. Lugano 
COST, Brussels, Belgium
e-mail: Giuseppe.Lugano@cost.eu
L. Fortunati 
University of Udine, Udine, Italy
e-mail: fortunati.deluca@tin.it

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 139

J. Vincent et al. (eds.), Social Robots from a Human Perspective,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9_12
140 J. Vincent et al.

offers the beginning of an intense dialogue between policy makers and social sci-
entists engaged in this field of research. It adds many interesting insights about the
processes of robotification experienced in our contemporary society.
At the heart of the debate in this volume is the tension between human and
machine that manifests in the question: in contemporary society how acceptable
are human behaviours in robots and robot-like behaviours in humans? This inter-
play between machine and human, the to and fro of the robotic turn is exemplified
in the analysis we have read herein.
The discourses are framed by the recent large survey from Europe
(Eurobarometer 2012) which showed that people’s ideas about what the robot is
corresponds more with the picture of an autonomous industrial robot than with a
human-like robot that could help people in their daily chores at home (see Taipale
et al. in this volume). This reinforces the understanding that what people primarily
consider a robot is something already used in industry, not something (more or less
futuristic) that is being developed on designers’ desks and in robot labs. However, at
the same time we also learned that in robot labs many social robots are indeed being
developed that push the boundaries of these conventional views. It is not uncom-
mon for roboticists to draw on human interaction with animals, and dogs in par-
ticular, to inform their research regarding the relationship and (emotional) bonds
between human and machine (Dautenhahn 2004), as well as research that informs
the robots designed for health care applications (e.g. Paro) and emotion manage-
ment by children with special needs, such as autism (KASPAR). Examples of robots
discussed in this volume include animal, as well as humanoid robots but what more
can we learn from observing and understanding humans in their everyday lives? The
human interaction with social robots that we have explored is not simply that which
deals with the reproduction sphere; we learn from Danese, for example, that there
are a multitude of projects delivering wearable technologies that can transform the
person clothed in them into a robot lookalike, give them cyborg-like properties to
protect them from harm, or even act as aggressor. Furthermore, Vincent argues that
the emotional needs of everyday life mediated via the combination of personalised
mobile phones and their human user has created millions of individually tailored,
unique, mobile emotionalised social robots—robots created at the hand of their user
and not by technicians and engineers for their user.
These contemporary examples of social robots exemplify the historically and
culturally shaped images of and attitudes towards robots on the one hand, and
actual human behaviour with robots on the other. Höflich and El Bayed’s chapter
in this book shows that the people implicated in their research commonly picture
robots as a cartoon and box-like character, reflecting the strong influence of media
and culture on the understanding of what robots look like, but these robots are for-
eigners who are expected to come and take our jobs. These studies about actual
human–robot interactions show that people are really curious about robots. Höflich
and El Bayed further show that robots are actively engaged in social interactions
with humans, they are welcomed as third members in human–human interactions,
and in these interactions robots become quickly anthropomorphised by human
users/operators.
12 Conclusions 141

With this book we have shown that our stereotypical images of the potential
users of robots are largely informed, both by our experiences of the early adopters
of other technologies and by distorted images repeatedly conveyed through media.
For example, Taipale et al. revealed in their chapter that social groups, which are
easily labelled as technologically non-savvy or the “laggard” adopters of new
technology, such as pensioners, are, contrary to normative expectations, actually
the most interested in having robots in the life domains that in general encounter
most opposition among the whole population. Furthermore, Law’s chapter reveals
several sociopolitical factors that influence the robotification of contemporary
Hong Kong. As long as mechanical aids for the disabled are designed only to serve
physical and functional recovery and a disabled person’s social needs are dis-
missed, these devices remain just mechanical robots and fail to develop into social
robots. Law demonstrates how political decisions and economic rationalities affect
this process by compelling many to continue to use old, less sociable, less automa-
tised and less roboticised technical aids.
Against this backdrop the alternative approach to the study of social robots
that was presented in the introduction of this book speaks for itself. By placing
the human in the centre of the analysis we have revealed that humans as social,
cultural and political actors have strong stereotypical preconceptions of robots and
of their users. However, and much more interestingly, in the end these preconcep-
tions may not hinder the adoption and penetration of robots as much as we might
expect. Lessons from other domestic technologies, especially from ICTs like the
mobile phone, show that as a rule people are inquisitive about new devices, ready
to test and try them, and willing to adopt and use them, especially when they find
uses that serve their personal needs.
In the introduction we also suggested that by beginning from the “softer” tech-
nologies and applications that are already widely adopted and used by ordinary
people and that in fact are the only way to make a plastic and metallic body of
a robot social (interactive, communicative, emotional, etc.), we could better under-
stand the ways robots might enter the private and domestic spaces. Katz et al.’s
chapter provides solid support for this approach. The authors show how earlier
experiences in using online communities and avatars pave the way for the adop-
tion of robots. The robotification of the society does not take place overnight.
Apart from the technological innovation and marketization of robots, it requires
that people have been accustomed to the automatised functions and processes
of everyday life before the marketization and adoption of social robots can take
place in earnest. In this respect, social media technologies and online environ-
ments work as an unparalleled spring board for the adoption of social robots as
the same technologies are being incorporated in robots to make them sociable and
easy to use. Illustrative of this is Cheng’s study that shows the automatised infor-
mation management/processing between parents and teachers in Chinese schools.
Implemented as a mobile application it manifests as a step towards the robotifica-
tion of education in China. The messages of Cheng’s study are that once people
can be encouraged to be accustomed to and recognise the value of automatised
processing of information in the different sectors of society, the same technology
142 J. Vincent et al.

should be easier to combine with a robotic body. If the robot is developed in this
order, its social functions should become more effortlessly legitimised as the
mechanical robot body will perform the social/cultural/interactive task already
regarded as meaningful and functional by users. Overall, these observations sug-
gest that once again young people would have an edge over the older citizens in
the taking up of a new technology. At the same time, this highlights the need to
engage adults and older adults better in the world of social media and the Internet.
As a large share of social robots is especially targeted to help ageing people,
familiarity with social media will certainly pave their way to a more and more
automatised and roboticised future as active citizens.
We have also learned more about how people react to what the robot look like,
and in particular the question of human-likeness which is embedded in robot stud-
ies. This question was addressed from many perspectives in the book, keeping the
human at the centre of analyses. Most of the studies of the book speak for some
sort of simplification of robots. Kaerlein’s study about the reduction of the com-
plexity of robots goes to the heart of the simplification debate. As is made clear in
this volume, instead of continuously increasing the complexity of robots with the
ultimate aim of making them human-like, it might be a viable strategy to consider
the specific needs of a user first and aim to develop robots with a simple design
and a limited number of technical functions. Indeed, the ability of humans to rec-
ognise the positive values of machines in support of their day-to-day life is well
articulated in Vincent’s chapter in which the mobile phone is appropriated and
made into an emotionalised social robot as a result of the constant emotional inter-
actions between the user and (mobile phone) machine.
It is worth noting that hitherto all widely spread and successful home electron-
ics and domestic devices have relatively simple designs and are usually simple
to use. On this basis when users’ technical needs for a robot are known maxim-
ising the amount of social and communicative diversity the robot supports, as
opposed to its range of functions and technical properties, might appear to be a
useful strategy for the commercialisation and marketisation of robots. We learned
from Höflich and El Bayed’s study that presents people’s attitudes and perception
of robots that in Germany people would be more likely to accept robots that are
least human-like. Although this issue is inconsistent with the well-known, albeit
disputed, uncanny valley thesis, it makes sense in their study context. The least
human-like robot examined was a robotic vacuum cleaner, which has no resem-
blance at all with a human being, but which is easy to accept by ordinary people
because of its similarity to other domestic appliances. When robots have little or
no similarity to home electronics or other domestic appliances, small likeness to
human beings may hinder people’s willingness to adopt robots more than remark-
able human-likeness (see Katz et al.’s study in this book).
From the viewpoint of human-centred design research the question of robots’
human-likeness raises even more issues. Fornari and Congiano’s chapter under-
lines the significance of a robot’s face for making human–robot interaction more
similar to human–human interaction. While this is definitely true to some extent,
another question follows from it: do people like to interact with robots as they
12 Conclusions 143

interact with people? There are already some studies suggesting instances when
people would not like a robot to communicate like people do, but in a more com-
puter-like manner (e.g. Baron, forthcoming). This leads us to propose that more
research is needed to understand when to use a human face and when to use a
screen as an interface between robot and human user. In this regard, one of the key
concepts, as identified in this volume, is the intuitivity of interfaces. It would be
incautious to say that a human face is always more intuitive than a screen as we
are used to communicating with other humans face-to-face. However, we should
not overlook that we are used to communicating with technologies, not through
face, but through screens and keyboards (starting from television and home PCs,
smartphones and tablet computers), which in the present day are highly integrated
and highly intuitive information communication technologies (Emerson 2014).
Like Moniz’s argues in this book, one of the aims in robot development today is
to make user interfaces highly intuitive. If we utilise previous technologies which
are already widely adopted and are based on intuitive interfaces between a human
user and machine, such as the seminal iPad and other tablet devices that followed,
it might smooth the way towards the acceptance of domestic social robots in our
home and other private spheres.
We finish by considering the implications for further research and the limita-
tions of the research topic explored in this volume examining a human-centred
approach to social robots. We have outlined herein the foundations of social robot
studies and provided an interdisciplinary collection of cutting-edge articles in the
social sciences that combine theory with statistical, experimental studies and data
about human users collected from observation as well as participative surveys. The
inevitable limitation of this collection of studies is that being studies about social
robots at an exploratory and early stage of the research field, the overall discourse
can appear a little fragmented. Furthermore, the book has the limitation in that it
does not present results from Japan or South Korea which, by many measures, are
leading robot societies in the world. Comparative data from these countries would
have certainly enriched the contents of the book, yet we decided to give more
emphasis on the production of new knowledge considering countries and cultures
(Europe, China and the US), which have not received as much scholarly atten-
tion as Japan or South Korea, but which are likely to witness an intensive wave of
robotification in the future.
Future research needs to explore more about people’s imagination, social rep-
resentations and public awareness of robots in order to grasp better the concep-
tualization and the attitudes of people towards robots. At the same time, future
research needs to address more the behaviours towards and the practices of use
of current social robots by different social groups of varying age ranges and life
stages such as children, elderly, adults, house persons and service personnel.
Additionally within this framework, the study of social robot users’ online com-
munities can offer many useful insights towards the design of really user-friendly
future social robots.
144 J. Vincent et al.

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