Should Robots Blush?

Abstract

Social interaction is the most complex challenge in daily life. Inevitably, social robots will encounter interactions that are outside their competence. This raises a basic design question: how can robots fail gracefully in social interaction? The characteristic human response to social failure is embarrassment. Usefully, embarrassment signals both recognition of a problem and typically enlists sympathy and assistance to resolve it. This could enhance robot acceptability and provides an opportunity for interactive learning. Developing a project entitled ``Embarrassed Robots" that uses a speculative design approach, this thesis explores how, when and why robots might communicate embarrassment. Three studies are presented in this thesis to examine these research aims. First, a series of specially developed cultural probes, scenario developments, and low-fidelity prototyping exercises are used to understand public responses to the connection between the robot and embarrassment. In addition, an animation survey is conducted to explore forms and motions as signals of a robot's embarrassment. Finally, a video recording of a robot prototype's audience is analysed to see the potential for the robot's social acceptance level. The results suggest that embarrassment: is relevant for managing a diverse range of social scenarios, impacts both humanoid and non-humanoid robot design, and highlights the critical importance of understanding interactional context. The design of signals should consider reflecting human's non-verbal displays of embarrassment and the consequent affective expressions of embarrassment (e.g., sad, excited, happy, scared, etc.). The findings show that people will accept robots as a social subject if they see the affective signals which evoke empathy. The research results also indicate that people will respond to robots with social expressions and gestures if they see affective signals and forms. This research concludes that embarrassment is fundamental to competent social functioning and provides social robotics opportunities to expand the approaches to increase social acceptance of robots.