Social roboticists design their robots to function as social agents in interaction with humans and other robots. Although we do not deny that the robot’s design features are crucial for attaining this aim, we point to the relevance of spatial organization and coordination between the robot and the humans who interact with it. We recover these interactions through an observational study of a social robotics laboratory and examine them by applying a multimodal interactional analysis to two moments of robotics practice. We describe the vital role of roboticists and of the group of preverbal infants, who are involved in a robot’s design activity, and we argue that the robot’s social character is intrinsically related to the subtleties of human interactional moves in laboratories of social robotics. This human involvement in the robot’s social agency is not simply controlled by individual will. Instead, the human–machine couplings are demanded by the situational dynamics in which the robot is lodged.
VL - 41 IS - 6 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Moving Android On Social Robots and Body-in-Interaction JF - Social Studies of Science Y1 - 2009 A1 - Alač, M. KW - embodiment KW - gesture KW - human—technology extension KW - laboratory studies KW - multimodal semiotic interaction KW - social robotics AB -| Social robotics studies embodied technologies designed for social interaction. This paper examines the implied idea of embodiment using as data a sequence in which practitioners of social robotics are involved in designing a robot's movement. The moments of learning and work in the laboratory enact the social body as material, dynamic, and multiparty: the body-in-interaction. In describing subject—object reconfigurations, the paper explores how the well-known ideas of extending the body with instruments can be applied to a technology designed to function as our surrogate. |
VL - 39 IS - 4 ER -