The Synthetic Method in Social Robotics
@ ICSR 2016
Kansas City, USA
November, 1-3, 2016
Website:
http://icsr2016.engr.ku.edu/
Organizer:
Luisa Damiano, ESARG (Epistemology of the Sciences of the Artificial Research Group), University of Messina, Italy
(Email: ldamiano at unime.it)
Kansas City, USA
November, 1-3, 2016
Website:
http://icsr2016.engr.ku.edu/
Organizer:
Luisa Damiano, ESARG (Epistemology of the Sciences of the Artificial Research Group), University of Messina, Italy
(Email: ldamiano at unime.it)
Contemporary advancements in Social Robotics, implying the introduction of robots in an increasing number of operative contexts populated by human agents, are rapidly accelerating the emergence of mixed human-robot social ecologies. The awareness of this imminent transformation, potentially able to affect the structure of human sociality, makes it urgent to support frontier research in Social Robotics with a reflective interrogation directed to identify the possible impacts of its technological production on human social dynamics and systems.
One of the essential steps of this complex and plural exploration consists in the clarification of the ways and the objectives that currently guide the construction of “robots as social partners”, that is, the analysis of methods and goals that today orient design, implementation, and integration, within human social contexts, of robots endowed with “social presence” and “social competences”.
The SMSR 2016 workshop intends to contribute to this investigation by focusing on the use of the Synthetic Method within the research fields of Social Robotics and HRI, that is, one of the most diffused methods in the development of “Artificial Sociality” for robotic agents. In its most generic expression, this methodological approach – often synthetized through the slogan “Understanding by Building”- prescribes scientists to model living and cognitive processes, lato sensu, through the construction of artificial systems capable of generating these processes. The goal is twofold: testing scientific hypotheses on the mechanisms underlying the target processes, and building better artifacts, able to exploit these mechanisms to enhance their performances.
The application of the Synthetic Method in Social Robotics and HRI generally consists in the attempt of re-creating aspects of human and/or animal sociality in robotic agents, in order to test theories about related social dynamics, and to improve social capabilities of these agents. The SMSR 2016 workshop aims at creating a cross-disciplinary forum analyzing and discussing ways, goals, possibilities and limits of the application of the Synthetic Method in Social Robotics, on the basis of the idea that the part of Social Robotics that currently is engaged in the robotic modeling of human and animal sociality offers a particularly relevant perspective to study the emergent social metamorphosis generated by “social robots”.
One of the essential steps of this complex and plural exploration consists in the clarification of the ways and the objectives that currently guide the construction of “robots as social partners”, that is, the analysis of methods and goals that today orient design, implementation, and integration, within human social contexts, of robots endowed with “social presence” and “social competences”.
The SMSR 2016 workshop intends to contribute to this investigation by focusing on the use of the Synthetic Method within the research fields of Social Robotics and HRI, that is, one of the most diffused methods in the development of “Artificial Sociality” for robotic agents. In its most generic expression, this methodological approach – often synthetized through the slogan “Understanding by Building”- prescribes scientists to model living and cognitive processes, lato sensu, through the construction of artificial systems capable of generating these processes. The goal is twofold: testing scientific hypotheses on the mechanisms underlying the target processes, and building better artifacts, able to exploit these mechanisms to enhance their performances.
The application of the Synthetic Method in Social Robotics and HRI generally consists in the attempt of re-creating aspects of human and/or animal sociality in robotic agents, in order to test theories about related social dynamics, and to improve social capabilities of these agents. The SMSR 2016 workshop aims at creating a cross-disciplinary forum analyzing and discussing ways, goals, possibilities and limits of the application of the Synthetic Method in Social Robotics, on the basis of the idea that the part of Social Robotics that currently is engaged in the robotic modeling of human and animal sociality offers a particularly relevant perspective to study the emergent social metamorphosis generated by “social robots”.