Social robots from a human perspective

Addressing several issues that explore the human side of social robots, this book asks from a social and human scientific perspective what a social robot is and how we might come to think about social robots in the different areas of everyday life. Organized around three sections that deal with Perceptions and Attitudes to Social Robots, Human Interaction with Social Robots, and Social Robots in Everyday Life, the book explores the idea that even if technical problems related to robot technologies can be continuously solved from a machine perspective, what kind of machine do we want to have and use in our daily lives? Experiences from previously widely adopted technologies, such smartphones, hint that robot technologies could potentially be absorbed into the everyday lives of humans in such a way that it is the human that determines the human-machine interaction. In a similar way to how today’s information and communication technologies were first designed for professional/industrial use, but which soon were commercialised for the mass market and then personalised by humans in the daily practices of use, the use of social robots is now facing the same revolution of ‘domestication’. In this transformation, which involves the profound embedding of robots in the everyday life, the ‘human’ aspect of a social robot will have a key role to play. This book casts light on this burning issue, which is one of the central topics that will be taught and studied in universities worldwide and that will be discussed widely, publicly and repeatedly in the near future. The book makes a comprehensive overview of the human dimension of social robots by discussing both transnational features and national specificities.