Exploring and Designing our Future Robot Companions

Abstract

Exploring and Designing our Future Robot Companions focuses on the people behind the robots in several thematically clustered interviews with representatives of each of the ten organisations involved – interspersed with tantalising glimpses of the robotic entities and devices in action. Through the words of the researchers themselves, we discover that the project is aimed squarely at what is surely set to become one of the defining concerns for robotics, computing, and AI in the 21st century: how to design artificial companions in a socially appropriate and useful way.