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Socializing robots: constructing robotic sociality in the design and use of the assistive robot PARO

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Abstract

The goal of introducing robots into everyday use has led to their reconceptualization as social technologies, for which interacting with people is a fundamental and necessary function. Robot sociality in this context is generally defined as a set of individual properties of the artifact, such as a human-like appearance or the ability to read social cues. In this paper, we propose an alternative view of robot sociality as an emergent relational property of the interactions between the robot and its social context, actively constructed by designers, users, and other actors affected by robots. We illustrate this perspective through the example of the robot PARO, a commercial social robot commonly used in eldercare, which we analyzed in a series of observational studies of the social processes of its design in the laboratory and its use in an eldercare facility. Our analysis shows how the robot as a social technology is constructed through the actions and sense making of various actors and the situated dynamics of interaction in particular institutional contexts. We first describe the social factors and rationale that influenced PARO’s design in the laboratory, and then discuss how the robot is scaffolded by users in a nursing home in the midwestern United States. Our studies go beyond the typical focus on one-on-one interaction between people and robots as the unit of analysis of human–robot interaction, to incorporate the broader social context as a necessary component of the successful design and implementation of social robots in society.

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Notes

  1. Researchers are developing robots for use in environments like private homes (e.g., Forlizzi et al. 2004; Forlizzi 2007), schools (e.g., Tanaka et al. 2006; Kanda et al. 2007), nursing homes (e.g., Wada et al. 2010; Banks et al. 2008; Heerink et al. 2009; Sabelli et al. 2011; Khosla et al. 2012), hospitals (e.g., Mutlu and Forlizzi 2008), and malls (e.g., Kanda et al. 2009).

  2. The use of this term is inspired by Hutchins’ studies of human cognition as being distributed within a network of people, artifacts, concepts, and the environment. The first author has applied this notion to the analysis of human–robot interaction in prior work (Michalowski et al. 2007; Šabanović et al. 2006).

  3. These include Rodney Brooks’ concept that the “world is its own best model” (1991), Braitenberg’s (1984) “vehicles”—a conceptual series of robots that displayed simple behaviors (e.g., moving toward light) which could be interpreted by people as psychological states (e.g., fear of the dark), and the work of Japanese cognitive scientist Masanao Toda (1981).

  4. Kaplan (2004) suggests this practice of perfecting nature is a theme in Japanese culture that extends to robot design.

  5. A video of baby seals taken during this trip is displayed on PARO’s website alongside videos of PARO’s use in caregiving (http://www.parorobots.com/video.asp).

  6. PARO’s infant-like big eyes and soft rounded shape of the robot follow the “baby schema”—a set of facial and body features that scientists (e.g., Glocker et al 2009) have identified as making a person, animal, or thing seem “cute” and inspiring caregiving tendencies in adults.

  7. More information on the local cultural and social influences on PARO’s design can be found in Šabanovic (2014a).

  8. For a broader discussion on technological determinism in social robotics see Šabanović (2010).

  9. http://www.parorobots.com/.

  10. Methodological details and further results are reported in prior publications (Šabanović et al. 2013; Chang et al. 2014a, 2014b; Chang and Šabanović 2015).

  11. We have started pursuing this direction of study through participatory design of socially assistive robots with older adults (Šabanović et al. 2015).

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Takanori Shibata for hosting the first author in his laboratory and the loan of a PARO robot to our laboratory for research purposes. We are also grateful to the participants and nursing home staff for assistance, to our colleagues C. C. Bennett, P. Lopes and M. Grant for their help in implementing the studies, and to M. R. Francisco for his comments on drafts of this article. The research was supported by National Science Foundation Grants SES-0522630 and IIS-1143712.

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  1. School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University Bloomington, 919 E 10th Street, Bloomington, IN, 47408, USA

    Selma Šabanović & Wan-Ling Chang

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  1. Selma Šabanović
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  2. Wan-Ling Chang
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Correspondence to Selma Šabanović.

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Šabanović, S., Chang, WL. Socializing robots: constructing robotic sociality in the design and use of the assistive robot PARO. AI & Soc 31, 537–551 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0636-1

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