Knight, H. (2011). Eight Lessons Learned about Non-verbal Interactions through Robot Theater. In Social Robotics (Vol. 7072, pp. 42–51). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25504-5_5
Notes:
p.42: we have identified eight lessons from Robot Theater that inform the design of social robots today. As an interdisciplinary field, we include examples spanning robotics researchers, acting theorists, cognitive neuroscientists, behavioral psychologists and dramaturgy literature. Lessons learned include (1) the importance of intentionality in action; (2)(3)(4) the relationship between embodiment, gesture, and emotional expression; (5) the bipolar sociability categorization between machine and agent; (6) the power of interaction partners to shape robot attributions; (7) the role of audience acknowledgement and feedback; (8) the power of humor to enhance interaction — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.42: For the purposes of this document, theatrical “performance” can range from literal stage with audience to pre-meditated collisions with human environments, as in guerrilla theater or street performance — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.43: In addition to its entertainment value, investigating machine performers has research value in developing everyday robots, namely, theater is inherently social, repeatable, and there are various test subjects sitting in the audience — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.43: a robot’s movement and engagement pattern impact our interpretation of its intention, capability, and state. With a long history of encoding and honing expression, physical theater provides pre-processed methodologies for interpreting and communicating human non-verbal behaviors that we are beginning to test on robots — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.44: narrative arc and timeline are central to social interaction. — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.44: Lesson 1 Have a Goal: Convey Intentionality — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.44: “create robot behaviors that are human readable such that people can figure out what the robot is doing, reasonably predict what the robot will do next, and ultimately interact with the robot in an effective way. — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.45: physical animations to clarify the intention and internal state of the robot, she felt more goodwill toward the system that was, nonetheless, still blocking the hallway. — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.45: importance of relative and absolute timing profiles in “look, reach, grab” behaviors to indicate motivation, emotionality and communicate social meaning — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.45: By using movement profiles rather than directly imitated gestures, any kinetic robot can convey intentionality, regardless of anthropomorphic form. — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.45: Lesson 2 There Is No Mind without Body — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.45: Human affect expressions derive from our physicality, thus robots are uniquely capable of leveraging their embodiment to communicate on human terms — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.45: expression is inherently physical — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.45: James-Lange Theory [19] is a somatic theory of emotion, in which, “the perception of bodily changes as they occur is the emotion. — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.45: The idea that behavior precedes feeling is important. Regardless of complete literal or physiological truth, this framing of body on higher or equal footing with the mind will allow robotics to more fully leverage its physicality to improve expression. — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.45: a robot not fully leveraging its physicality not only loses a mode of communication but is also less expressive — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.46: Lesson 3 Mirror Neurons: Physicality and Motion — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.46: We often interpret robot behaviors, especially non-verbal expressions, by re-mapping them on to ourselves, thus robots can provide people with effective stimuli given a deeper knowledge of movement metaphors — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.46: “Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others, not through conceptual reasoning, but through direction simulation, by feeling, not by thinking — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.46: The impact of this new understanding is that watching something might be, neurologically, the same thing as doing something; the parallel neurons will fire — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.46: Lesson 4 Outward Emotional Communication Trumps Inward Experience — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.46: Our perception of a social robot’s expression has more influence on interaction than its true internal state — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.47: Lesson 5 Social Role: The Gulf between Props and Character — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.47: Death and the Powers
http://opera.media.mit.edu/projects/deathandthepowers/ — Written Feb 5, 2017
p.47: sense of authentic interactions seems to distinguish these labels — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.47: Heddatron
http://www.sideshowtheatre.org/performances/productions/heddatron — Written Feb 5, 2017
p.47: these robots fell into the domain of props because of the lack of believable interaction arcs with the human actors on stage — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.47: Geminoid-F one-scene performance
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sI4mI10cBPM — Written Feb 5, 2017
p.48: Lesson 6 Good Actors Outweigh Bad Actors: Attribution — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.48: Midsummer Night’s Dream flying robots
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AeLcDXHRMlo — Written Feb 5, 2017
p.48: “Consistent with stage theory, where the visible reaction of the actor to an action by another actor creates the impression of affect, the human actors can create affect even if the robot’s actions are independent. — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.48: Lesson 7 Acknowledgement/Learning: Looping in Audience Feedback — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.49: Never ‘eat’ the audience’s laughter or applause by beginning the next joke too early; Acknowledge the valence of the audience response to achieve higher knowledge attribution and make them feel more included, whether verbally or through gaze and body pose; consider overarching arc; and develop a good rhythm for each individual joke. Many of these ideas generalize to social robotics — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.49: Lesson 8 Humor Will Make People Like Your Robot Better — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.49: Humor can enhance human-robot interaction by helping creating common ground, trust or forgiveness, but its subtlety makes collaboration with theater communities uniquely beneficial — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017
p.49: users assigned to computers that used humor during a procedural task rated the agents as more likable, reported greater cooperation between themselves and the machine, and declared more feelings of similarity and relatablity with the system. — Highlighted Feb 5, 2017