Studying robot social cognition within a developmental psychology framework

Kerstin Dautenhahn, Aude Billard

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

21 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The paper discusses two prominent theories of cognitive development and relates them to experiments in social robotics. The main difference between these theories lies in the different views on the relationship between a child and its social environment: a) the child as a solitary thinker (Piaget) and b) the child in society (Vygotsky). We discuss the implications this has on the design of socially intelligent agents, focusing on robotic agents. We argue that the framework proposed by Vygotsky provides a promising research direction in autonomous agents. We give examples of implementations in the area of social robotics which support our theoretical considerations. More specifically, we demonstrate how a teacher-learner setup can be used to teach a robot a proto-language. The same control architecture is also used for a humanoid doll robot which can interact with a human by imitation. Another experiment addresses dynamic coupling of movements between a human and a mobile robot. Here, emergent robot-human interaction dynamics are influenced by the temporal coordination between the robot's and the human's movements.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication1999 3rd European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots, Eurobot 1999 - Proceedings
EditorsSjur J. Vestli, Wolfram Burgard, Ulrich Nehmzow, Gerhard Schweitzer
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Pages187-194
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)0780356721, 9780780356726
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 1999
Externally publishedYes
Event3rd European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Rob.ots, Eurobot 1999 - Zurich, Switzerland
Duration: 6 Sept 19998 Sept 1999

Publication series

Name1999 3rd European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots, Eurobot 1999 - Proceedings

Conference

Conference3rd European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Rob.ots, Eurobot 1999
Country/TerritorySwitzerland
CityZurich
Period6/09/998/09/99

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