Between culture and robotics: The making of social robots

在这个项目中，研究了社交机器人是如何设计的，以及这种设计如何影响人们与社交机器人的交互和体验。社交机器人是在人类周围使用的自主机器人，它与人类进行社交互动，以帮助他们实现目标。这类机器人在各种日常环境中越来越常见，包括疗养院、零售店、银行、教育机构和医疗机构。然而，他们的引入对社会的影响仍然是未知的。这类社交机器人的设计和互动功能可能至关重要，因为一旦实施，设计可能会锁定文化假设。这个项目的重点是机器人学家对现有社会问题和可能的技术解决方案的概念化，以及他们更广泛的文化假设如何塑造他们制造的机器人类型，以及这种设计反过来如何影响人类与社交机器人之间的互动。更好地理解社会和文化需求、机器人研究及其应用之间的关系，将有助于了解如何创造社交机器人，而不会无意中加剧群体之间的文化偏见和失衡。本项目使用了三种研究方法。首先，对从事社交机器人研究的尖端大学研究人员进行了40次开放式采访。数据被编码为机器人专家与社会问题相关的研究目标、他们对此类问题的解决方案的文化假设以及他们的社交机器人设计之间的关系的基本模式。其次，对社会机器人研究实验室的日常研究活动进行人种学观察，包括实验室会议、设计会议、编码和实地研究。第三，分析了机器人专家实地研究期间拍摄的机器人与人类互动的视频记录。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In this project, how social robots are designed and how such design affects people’s interaction and experience with social robots is investigated. Social robots are autonomous robots that are used around humans and that socially interact with them to help their objectives. Such robots are increasingly common in a variety of everyday settings, including nursing homes, retail stores, banks, educational settings and medicine. The social implications of their introduction, however, are still unknown. The design and interactional features of such social robots are likely to be crucial because, once implemented, the design may lock in cultural assumptions. The focus of this project is on how roboticists’ conceptualization of extant social problems and possible technological solutions, as well as their broader cultural assumptions, shape the kind of robots they make, and how this design in turn affects the interactions between humans and social robots. A better understanding of the relationship between social and cultural demands, robotics research, and its applications will contribute to knowledge on how to create social robots without inadvertently reinforcing cultural biases and imbalances across groups.Three research methods are used in this project. First, 40 open-ended interviews are conducted with a sample of cutting-edge university researchers engaged with social robotics. Data are coded for primary patterns of the relationships between roboticists’ research goals related to social problems, their cultural assumptions about the solution to such problems, and their designs of social robots. Second, ethnographic observation is conducted on the everyday research activities in a social robotics research lab, including lab meetings, design sessions, coding, and field research. Third, video recordings of robot-human interactions, taken during the roboticists’ field research, are analyzed.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.