Natural Multimodal Interaction with a Social Robot: What are the Premises?

Abstract

Social robotics seeks to impart to robots the capability of analyzing and synthesizing appropriate social and affective signals that will allow them to function in a social context as seamlessly as possible. Recent efforts in social robotics looks at the development of social skills in humans and non-human animals, resulting in ambitious long-term goals that require great progress in multimodal interaction research as a necessary step. In this paper, we critically discuss the grand challenge of social interaction in robotics and some of its premises.