Social robots are like real people: First impressions, attributes, and stereotyping of social robots.

Abstract

There have been over one thousand published scholarly articles about social robots in the academic literature, indicative of considerable interest as evidenced by new research labs, conferences, journals, TED talks, companies, patents, and products. The social robots of interest are autonomous physical embodiments (i.e., they exist in the real world not just on a screen), and they communicate with humans via social behaviors (e.g., speech, gestures, and movement) that mimic human interactions that are linked with particular social roles that a robot might play. The proposed roles for the robots vary, from teaching to childcare to toys to elder companionship, but the underlying rationale for their popularity is similar across contexts. Social robots can be designed with human-like features, textures, and movements, and programmed to behave in variety of social or helpful ways, enough so that the people who use them could interact via familiar and pleasurable and even emotional connections. Robots have the added advantage of lower cost, continuous availability, and constancy of responses compared to human counterparts. The potential for robots to improve human life across a range of capacities is high.