Social Robots

Social robots are an autonomous robot that communicates and interacts with other autonomous physical agents or with humans. It is physically embodied. While most robots possess social qualities and social robotics is the recent branch of robotics. Robots which communicates on social level are already being researched in the 1990s. Difficulty in building autonoumous robot is enormous and it requires to be correctly interpreting people’s action and respond to them appropriately, which is not yet possible. People interacting with social robots have very high expectations from social robots of its capabilities.Till now many of the social robots are partially or fully remote controlled. This technique to controlling the social robot is called Mechanical Turk or Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz studies is useful for the researchers of social robots to know how they interact and communicate socially.

Social robots perform all the basic functions along with the social interaction. And the interaction may vary from tasks to task from simple to extreme tasks and de to which it will make them reliable. Amazing thing is that the social robots are made to work along with human beings in their own workspace. Mostly the interaction is said to be cooperative but non-cooperative can also fall under this.

Two of the most important requirement of social robots is the Turing Test to determine the robot’s communication skills and Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics for its behaviour. Only communicating and interacting doesnot makes a robot to be called a social robot until and unlesshe is fully bound with the human beings by maintaining and following the required norms and living standards. Cultural dependency also matters for social robots as they living in the human society.

So a social robot must interact within the rules attached to it. A social robot must be aware of all the rules of the society and should be made in such a way that they must be able to apply and follow it in the real situations. In most social robots the interaction with human will be gradually approached as and when there will be advancement in technology of robots and implementation of many human like features and skills. Kaspar a social robot designed by University of Hertfordshire that helps children with autism and they learn responses from the robot through interactive games and plays. Researchers have also found that the companion with social robots is increasing. Literature presents different models regarding this concern. Coming years will bring a lot of change in the of social robot technology and this in turn will result in the growth of social robots.