Dear Editor,
In concert with your article about the Robotic Einstein personality, I wanted to share a similar research from our 3-year-old group called International Robotics, Inc., in a field we have called ‘Technology-to-People Behavioral Psychology.’
The study involves the interrelationships between humans and machines, employing specially designed adult-size interactive programmable and remote-controllable robotic surrogates, which our group began to employ as communications aids for the learning disabled, socially maladjusted, handicapped, autistic and emotionally challenged. This research began in the early ’70s and has led to many unique discoveries in terms of a robot’s ability to circumvent the many constraints of social protocol, including fears, stress, anxieties, suspicions and defense mechanisms.
These studies have shown that behavior and mannerism are of tantamount importance; even more so than an ability to express actual emotions in the physical sense. IRI’s findings have shown that, in the same manner a person will imagine the visual contents and emotions generated by reading a well-written book, a person interacting with an appropriately designed and behaving robot will process that robot’s words and simple behavior more successfully when the robot does not appear to physically duplicate the human form in its entirety. During the past several decades of experimentation with all manners of robotic form, it has been found that a robot attempting to completely and accurately duplicate a human being’s physical appearance will tend to send out a threatening or competitive message. By contrast, robots who display simple but not entirely human anthropomorphic form tend to be more easily approached and welcomed by people.
We find that, in more intimate or public settings where a fully operational robot communicates, interacts or performs a variety of tasks, a robot with reduced levels of human-like features is seen as less threatening and more approachable by its human audiences. Conversely, when such a robot mimics human emotions, idiosyncratic behavior and many of the unpredictable factors prevalent in a human-to-human interaction, it is also received more positively than those who behave predictably like a machine. There seems therefore to be a winning formula prevalent in this unique science of human-to-machine interface, and this formula appears to be a synthesis of very extroverted behavior in the embodiment of an intentionally nonhuman yet somewhat anthropomorphic robot. We have noticed audiences of all sorts relish in the opportunity to let down their defenses, interacting with less concern for acceptance, judgment, criticism or even rejection. This is especially true when the robot’s behavior is compassionate, nonjudgmental, loving and able to offer its human counterpart its unconditional friendship.
In concert with this research, our group is also working on biosensor technologies which will someday give intelligent machines the ability to sense humans’ health signs and emotions, thus adding considerably to their ability to more accurately understand and respond to the complex nuances and intricacies inherent in human behavior.