On electric owls : implicit life-stories of robots and their impact on human empathy

Abstract

Robots are moving from factories to people's homes taking on the roles of artificial pets, tutors and companions. If we are to have emotionally engaging robots, we must understand how we can design robots that people feel empathy towards. In this work, I explore one design criteria for such robots: implicit life stories or the ability for a robot to experience the world we share, be transformed by that experience and communicate that experience to us. Through the construction of novel robots that can have implicit life-stories, and through human subject studies I show that such robots can evoke empathy. I also show that empathy for robots can impact empathy for other human beings.