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Review
. 2021;2(1):9-19.
doi: 10.1007/s43154-020-00035-0. Epub 2021 Feb 4.

What Makes a Robot Social? A Review of Social Robots from Science Fiction to a Home or Hospital Near You

Anna Henschel #  1 , Guy Laban #  1 , Emily S Cross #  1   2
Affiliations
Review

What Makes a Robot Social? A Review of Social Robots from Science Fiction to a Home or Hospital Near You

Anna Henschel et al. Curr Robot Rep. 2021.

Abstract

Purpose of review: We provide an outlook on the definitions, laboratory research, and applications of social robots, with an aim to understand what makes a robot social-in the eyes of science and the general public.

Recent findings: Social robots demonstrate their potential when deployed within contexts appropriate to their form and functions. Some examples include companions for the elderly and cognitively impaired individuals, robots within educational settings, and as tools to support cognitive and behavioural change interventions.

Summary: Science fiction has inspired us to conceive of a future with autonomous robots helping with every aspect of our daily lives, although the robots we are familiar with through film and literature remain a vision of the distant future. While there are still miles to go before robots become a regular feature within our social spaces, rapid progress in social robotics research, aided by the social sciences, is helping to move us closer to this reality.

Keywords: Cognitive neuroscience; Human-robot interaction; Social cognition; Social robots; Socially assistive robots.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of InterestThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Recent examples of the Pepper robot ‘in the wild’. a The social robot was placed at the customer checkout in a German supermarket and reminded shoppers of new hygiene regulations to ensure public health in April 2020, during the global coronavirus pandemic. b Pepper in a Dutch souvenir shop at Schiphol airport. (Photos taken by Anna Henschel)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Examples of several social robotics platforms that are heavily used in research and/or have enjoyed commercial success, and are discussed in this review. a Paro, the cuddly baby harp seal robot. b MiRo, the puppy/bunny-like robot. c Jibo, the erstwhile personal home assistant robot. d iCub, the humanoid robot testbed for human cognition and AI. e Nao, a humanoid robot. f Darwin, a small humanoid robot (now discontinued)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Subject areas in the ACM-HRI conference proceedings. The subject areas are presented as a word cloud with the size of the word representing the number of conference proceedings in one category. Robotics being the most frequent one (947 results), there are some nods to the social sciences: psychology (143 search results), user studies (175 results), and empirical studies in interaction design (57 results). (Screenshot taken from https://dl.acm.org/conference/hri)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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