Companions, Virtual Butlers, Assistive Robots: Empirical and Theoretical Insights for Building Long-Term Social Relationships

Companions, Virtual Butlers, Assistive Robots: Empirical and Theoretical Insights for Building Long-Term Social Relationships

A symposium at EMCSR 2010 (20th European Meeting on Cybernetics and System Research), Vienna/Austria, April 6 to 9, 2010.

Robots and agents are becoming increasingly prominent in everyday life, e.g. as companions, user interfaces to smart homes, household robots, or for lifestyle reassurance. In these roles, they have to interact with their users in a complex social world, and must build and maintain long-term relationships with them. What is considered as "long-term" is not primarily a question of absolute duration. The important aspect here is that the relationship should be sustained and sustainable once the novelty effect has worn off. Are existing theories (emotion, social, psychological, behavioural) sufficient to explain what happens in this kind of interaction, and what are the required computational models to analyse and generate respective (communicative) behaviours? What types of additional (or different) theories and models would be required? What types of data would be required and what are the best methods of obtaining and analysing such data? Do we find gender differences in the ways how companions, virtual butlers and assistive robots are perceived and how long-term relations between humans and these companion technologies are built and sustained?<p>

We therefore call for contributions on topics including (but not limited to): <p>

o theoretical and empirical research on long-term relationships of humans with humans, animals, and machines that show complex interactive behaviours <p>

o methodology to create knowledge about interaction with companions, virtual butlers and assistive robots<p>

o (computational) models and architectures for sustained social interaction <p>

o case studies and good practice in user participation in the specification and development of companion, virtual butler and assistive robot technology<p><p>


Symposium Chairs: Dirk Heylen, Brigitte Krenn, Sabine Payr<p><p>



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