At Least, Be Human: Humanizing the Robot as a Medium for Communication

Abstract

This work presents accessibility as a way to humanize social robots while enabling robot-mediated communication for human-human interaction. A central tenet of human-robot interaction research is to humanize robots as collaborators and companions. Literal approaches to humanizing, either through human-like behaviors or humanoid embodiments, pose technological and social challenges that have prevented adoption of robots in everyday contexts. Even if convincingly humanized robots could be achieved, human-robot interaction may enable an escapism that diminishes our capacity for human-human interaction. I propose to avoid these pitfalls by humanizing the robot as a medium for communication through accessibility. Accessibility humanizes technology by making inner workings visible and familiar to human users, promoting understanding of technological processes and imperfections. Accessibility also enables broader demographics of lay users to become involved with robotics, enabling communication through robots, from development processes (e.g. physical and behavioral design) to applications (e.g. telepresence). I use the open-source Blossom social robot as an extended case study of this approach and detail its technical implementations and research deployments.