FaceBots: Steps Towards Enhanced Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction by Utilizing and Publishing Online Social Information

TL;DR

This paper presents a robot that enhances long-term human-robot relationships by utilizing online social information and shared memories, aiming to create more meaningful interactions through face recognition and dialogue capabilities.

Contribution

The paper introduces a robot that leverages online social data and shared episodic memories to improve long-term human-robot interactions, a novel approach in social robotics.

Findings

Robot successfully uses social web data for interaction

Shared memories enhance relationship sustainability

Integration of face recognition and dialogue improves engagement

Abstract

Our project aims at supporting the creation of sustainable and meaningful longer-term human-robot relationships through the creation of embodied robots with face recognition and natural language dialogue capabilities, which exploit and publish social information available on the web (Facebook). Our main underlying experimental hypothesis is that such relationships can be significantly enhanced if the human and the robot are gradually creating a pool of shared episodic memories that they can co-refer to (shared memories), and if they are both embedded in a social web of other humans and robots they both know and encounter (shared friends). In this paper, we are presenting such a robot, which as we will see achieves two significant novelties.