Event date:
Wednesday 2 November
Time:
13:00
An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Mark Paterson (IASH-SSPS Research Fellow 2022; University of Pittsburgh)
Embodiment, Difference and the Role of Nonverbal Communication in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
Robots have been imagined, engineered, and designed according to certain cultural norms about human embodiment. For example, recent work on the ‘whiteness’ of AI and its physical form in humanoid robots adds urgency to the call for roboticists to take account of race, and the recent subfield of Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) is designing robots to interact with neurodiverse user groups, including people on the autism spectrum and those with dementia. My project addresses two broad but related questions. First, what cultural-historical traditions have shaped current public attitudes to robot embodiments, particularly in terms of race and gender? Second, what is the role of nonverbal communication (especially gesture, proxemics, and haptics) in fostering more inclusive human-robot interactions to diverse user groups? The project is intended to disseminate findings to robotics groups for the purposes of interaction design, but should also stimulate provocations about disability, diversity, and robotic platforms as sites for social experimentation.