Joint Interaction and Mutual Understanding in Social Robotics.

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Philosophy of Technology

Background:

• Social robotics aims to create robots for human interaction.
• Mutual understanding is considered essential for successful human-robot joint interaction.
• Existing research questions the legitimacy and possibility of genuine human-robot joint interaction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the conditions and legitimacy of human-robot joint interaction.
• To explore the role of mutual understanding in human-robot collaboration.
• To analyze the ethical implications of current human-robot interaction paradigms.

Main Methods:

• Review of technical approaches for implementing human-like communication in social robots.
• Examination of human anthropomorphism tendencies in human-robot interaction.
• Analysis of prominent theories of mutual understanding and their application to human-robot contexts.

Main Results:

• Technical implementations focus on making robots accessible and understandable to humans.
• Human tendency to anthropomorphize influences perception of robot understanding.
• Current concepts of mutual understanding do not fully support genuine human-robot joint interaction.

Conclusions:

• True human-robot joint interaction is not currently achievable.
• The findings have significant moral and ethical implications for the development and deployment of social robots.