What kind of relationship can you have with a social robot?

In this video Vanessa Evers introduces you to social robots. Vanessa Evers is a full professor of Human Media Interaction at the University of Twente and Science Director of the DesignLab at the University of Twente. Her research focuses on Human Interaction with Autonomous Agents such as robots or machine learning systems and cultural aspects of Human Computer Interaction. In this video she explains that social robots are not just instruments that perform specific tasks. Rather, they are mediators of practices.

A museum guide robot is not just a fancy source of information. By helping to shape people’s interactions, and for instance directing people’s attention, it influences the experience of being in a museum. A robot to teach autistic children is not just an interesting addition to a human teacher, but it reorganises the relations between pupil and teacher.

To design robots that work with humans you need to take into account their impact on humans, so this is a question that occupies Vanessa Evers is a very specific way.