Joe Robot and Anthropos were social robots at

Media Lab Europe Media Lab Europe (MLE) was a research institute in Dublin, Ireland, based on the MIT Media Lab concept. Created in 2000, it went into voluntary liquidation early in 2005. MLE was one of two such projects, the other of which, Media Lab Asia, s ...

. They were developed to aid in research on

anthropomorphism Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...

and to explore the illusion of life and intelligence during the development of a meaningful social interaction between artificial systems and people. As artificial systems enter our social space, we will inherently project/impose our interpretation on their actions similar to the techniques we employ in rationalising, for example, a pet's behaviour. This propensity to anthropomorphise should not be seen as a hindrance to social system development, but rather a useful mechanism that requires judicious examination and employment in social system research. A fundamental balance between function and form for human-robot interaction is necessary.

References

*Duffy, B.R., "Anthropomorphism and The Social Robot", Special Issue on Socially Interactive Robots, Robotics and Autonomous Systems 42 (3-4), 31 March 2003, pp170–190

External links

*The Anthropos Project Prototype robots Social robots {{robotics-stub