Shaping Human-Robot Interaction: Understanding theSocial Aspects of Intelligent Robotic Products Christoph BartneckTechnical University of Eindhoven Den Dolech 2, 5600 MB EindhovenThe Netherlands christoph@bartneck.deJodi ForlizziHCII and School of Design Carnegie Mellon University5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15221forlizzi@cs.cmu.edu Categories and Subject DescriptorsH.5.m [Information Interfaces And Presentation]: MiscellaneousKeywordsRobotics; Social Interaction; Product; Human-RobotSOCIAL ROBOTSThe field of robotics is changing at an unprecedented pace. Robotic technologies that integrate information technology with physical embodiment are now robust enough to be deployed in industrial, institutional, and domestic settings. They have the potential to be greatly beneficial to humankind. However, how these products should behave and interact with humans — act socially — remains largely unclear. When designing these products, we will need to make judgments about what technologies to pursue, what systems to make, and how to consider context when designing artifacts and services. Researchers and designers have only just begun to understand these critical issues. For example, Figure 1 shows an early prototype of an emotionally expressive car. Such a product prompts manyquestions, including: Figure 1: Toyota PodShould the car express emotions? Will it be appropriate for the car to express schadenfreude when passing by a broken-down car on the highway? Will the user feel comfortable with any of these interactions?A related issue is the impact of autonomy on the social role of an intelligent robotic product. Autonomous actions will be perceived as intentional behavior which is usually only ascribed to living beings. The artifact becomes a social actor and has to fit into our society, including its norms, rules and regulations. But will an intelligent robotic product receive the same social status as a creature? Will they become pets? The degree and type of autonomy these products can exhibit will greatly shape their interactions with people. The interactions can range, for example, from: • people doing all the work (for example, interacting with a toy like Furby [Furby, 1998]• people teaming with robotic products to accomplish tasks (for example, robots designed to help elders remain independent in their homes [Montemerlo et al, 2002] • products providing simple social response to human interaction, for example, Kismet, a socially aware research prototype (Breazeal, 2003) • a fully reciprocally social robot.We need to examine issues related to the design and development of social robots that act autonomously — that is, on behalf of humans without continuous input from humans. A forum for researchers in a variety of disciplines is needed to discuss issues related to the interactions between humans and social robots.OVERVIEWRobotics is a broad discipline. The United Nations (UN), in a recent robotics survey, groups robotics into three major categories: industrial robotics, professional service robotics, and personal service robotics [UN, 2002]. Industrial robots represent the vast majority of robotic development, with many deployed in the automotive industry, where the ratio of human workers to robots is about ten to one [UN, 2002]. Professional service robots are a much less practiced field, but it is quickly growing. These robots work in domains inaccessible to people, such as navigating abandoned mines Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). CHI 2004, April 24–29, 2004, Vienna, Austria. ACM 1-58113-703-6/04/0004.