Dubbed a nation of tea-drinkers, the British drink over 165 million cuppas every day. It's brought to them by their faithful butler who anticipates when it's time for a brew. Actually the last part is fantasy, but in the 21st century a robot companion could bring you cups of tea and be programmed to make life easy.
Addressing the question of how we can live with robots is the task of the Adaptive Systems Research Group at the University of Hertfordshire's School of Computer Science. Think of an ordinary apartment where you visit your friends, but this friend is made of metal and runs on algorithms.
Anyone for tea?
The trick is to study situations where the robot behaves correctly but inappropriately and understand how people respond. The robot approaches, interrupts and asks politely 'Excuse me, shall I bring you a cup of tea?' 'Yes!' you reply. Then it asks, 'Excuse me, would you like milk with the tea?' and so it goes on. This scenario demonstrates how logical robot behaviour could become annoying.
Group leader, Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn describes the challenge of creating social intelligence, 'From the robot's point of view it's reacting as intelligently as it can. But the problem is that it's not socially aware, it doesn't have a notion that when the person is doing something they're enjoying that you must be careful interrupting them.'</p>
How should one behave?
Although people prefer human-like robots, it must retain its machine-like appearance. People have a strong sense of repulsion if the robot looks too human, it's called the 'zombie-effect'. Yet, like a human the robot must be able to adapt to social rules, which are never static; human preferences are constantly changing.
Dautenhahn's team found that, 'People preferred the robot to approach in view from the front right or the front left. People didn't like it when the robot approached strictly from the front or from behind, but from the robot's point of view this is the shortest path.'
She concludes, 'Why should one want a robot? Bringing a cup of tea is nice but we can always get our own. But, where the effort of standing up or carrying would be so great, a robot would be very useful for improving independence.' And we'd save ourselves two minutes per cuppa.