The Role of Social Signals in Human-Robot Communication

Abstract:

The aim of my research is to investigate the sensory and motor mechanisms underlying mutual understanding in human-human interaction, with the technological goal of designing robots that can naturally cooperate with people in carrying out everyday tasks. The peculiarity of my approach is that robots, rather than being just the final goal of the research, are used as the ideal tool to investigate social interaction in a principled way. In the talk I will give an overview of all the social skills ported on the humanoid robot iCub in order to make it naturally cooperate with people. I will also discuss how such social skills change the way the humanoid robot is perceived.