Beyond human-likeness: Socialness is more influential when attributing mental states to robots.

We sought to replicate and expand previous work showing that the more human-like a robot appears, the more willing people are to attribute mind-like capabilities and socially engage with it. Forty-two participants played games against a human, a humanoid robot, a mechanoid robot, and a computer algorithm while undergoing functional neuroimaging. We confirmed that the more human-like the agent, the more participants attributed a mind to them.

Tracking human interactions with a commercially-available robot over multiple days.

As research examining human-robot interaction moves from the laboratory to the real world, studies seeking to examine how people interact with robots face the question of which robotic platform to employ to collect data . To facilitate the study of a broad range of individuals, from children to clinical populations, across diverse environments, from homes to schools, a robust, reproducible, low-cost and easy-to-use robotic platform is needed. We describe how a commercially available off-the-shelf robot, Cozmo, can be used to study embodied human-robot interactions in a wide variety of settings, including the user's home.

A neurocognitive investigation of the impact of socializing with a robot on empathy for pain.

To what extent can humans form social relationships with robots? In the present study, we combined functional neuroimaging with a robot socializing intervention to probe the flexibility of empathy, a core component of social relationships, towards robots. Twenty-six individuals underwent identical fMRI sessions before and after being issued a social robot to take home and interact with over the course of a week. While undergoing fMRI, participants observed videos of a human actor or a robot experiencing pain or pleasure in response to electrical stimulation.