Robots that Talk and Listen

Judith Markowitz

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781614519157
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Robotics
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Robots That Talk and Listen provides a forward-looking examination of speech and language in robots from technical, functional, and social perspectives.

Contributors address cultural foundations as well as the linguistic skills and technologies that robots need to function effectively in real-world settings. Among the most difficult and complex is the ability to understand and use language.

Speech-enabled automata are already serving as interactive toys, teacher's aides, and research assistants. These robots will soon be joined by personal companions, industrial co-workers, and military support automata.

The social impact of these and other robots extends well beyond the specific tasks they perform. Contributors tackle the most knotty of those issues, notably acceptance of advanced, speech-enabled robots and developing ethical and moral controls for robots.

Topics in this book include:

• Language and Beyond: The True Meaning of "Speech Enabled"
• Robots in Myth and Media
• Enabling Robots to Converse
• Language Learning by Automata
• Handling Noisy Settings
• Empirical Studies of Robots in Real-World Environments
• Acceptance of Intelligent Robots
• Managing Robots that Can Lie and Deceive
• Envisioning a World Shared with Intelligent Robots

Part I: Images

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Steve Mushkin

My robot

Abstract: Children in industrialized nations are growing up in a world populated by digital devices and content and that technology has been making its way into elementary education. Yet, the application and design of technologies for classrooms are determined by adults with minimal input from children other than to observe how children respond to it. It is our position that effective use of advanced technology in educational settings should reflect the vision and expectations of the children who will be utilizing it. Our object is to help technology developers, educators and parents design and use advanced technology in more effective ways.

This chapter describes two studies that use generative-research methodology to identify children’s expectations of advanced technologies in educational and personal settings. In the first study we asked 201 children aged 12 years and younger from eight different countries to draw a picture of something that they would like their computers to do differently. The majority (77 %) of them want computers to interact with them in more intuitive ways, such as using speech. Many of them also anthropomorphized the computer as robots. In the second study we asked 348 children from six countries to write stories about a robot that would serve as their personal robot. We found that for our participants the boundary between humans and machines is blurred. They view robots as peers – friends, study-buddies, and even caretakers – rather than as tools. Based on these findings, we recommend ways in which robots, speech, and other technologies can be applied to educational environments.

I Introduction

An increasing number of children and young adults are growing up in a world filled with digital devices, content, and services, such as video games, computers, cell phones, and the Internet. Prensky (2001) calls these individuals “digital natives” because they are “‘native speakers’ of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet” (Prensky 2001:1). These digital natives come from the generations that will live in a world that could be populated by autonomous, social robots and other incarnations of artificial intelligence. Since those technologies are already making their way into education settings, the objective of the research presented in this chapter is to help technology developers, educators and parents design advanced technology in more effective ways.

It is our view that the effectiveness of advanced systems for educational settings will be greatly enhanced if they reflect the vision of the digital natives who will be using them. There is, however, little research to guide such development. This chapter describes two studies that use generative-research methodology to identify what young children from around the world expect from advanced technologies in educational and personal settings.

The chapter is organized as follows: Section II describes generative-research methodology, Section III presents a study on the changes children want to see in computing and Internet technology, Section IV presents a literature review on children’s responses to robots followed by our second study on children’s images of robots. We conclude with a summary of our findings.

II Generative-research methodology

Generative-research methodology is a broad grouping of methods considered to be human-centric research because they treat people as collaborators and idea-generators (Hanington and Martin 2012). The object is to give participants room to express themselves creatively in some form while grounding that activity in specific research questions. Generative research can be powerful for unlocking concepts and ideas that aren’t necessarily easy to articulate. Additionally, people reveal a lot about themselves (e.g., problems, needs, dreams, aspirations) during the creative process, providing a rich context that the researchers might not elicit through other means. Because of these characteristics generative-research methodologies have proven useful for education design as a way to elicit abstract ideas more easily through means other than standard verbal interactions, such as interviews and surveys (Hanington 2007).

A generative-research study typically involves small samples. It begins with the creation of one or more artifacts (e.g., drawings, collages, stories). The artifacts are seen as containing creative projections of the target concepts that can facilitate subsequent verbal expression of concepts. Analysis of the material collected in a generative study can employ a variety of techniques that range from simple counting of occurrence to various types of content analysis. Among the most frequently-used techniques is clustering of common items as a way to generate categories (Robson 2002).

III What children want from technology

In 2010, we conducted a study designed to gather information about what digital natives want computers and the Internet to do differently (also see Latitude Research 2010). The key study questions were:

1. What does the next generation of digital natives expect and desire from technology, and how does this differ across world regions?
2. How can we engage children as authors and inventors of future technology, not just passive recipients?
3. How can young minds help companies develop unexpected content and technology experiences that resonate with people of all ages?

A Methodology

We employed generative-research techniques with 201 children aged twelve and under from eight different countries: Argentina, Australia, Chile, Colombia, India, Mexico, South Africa, and the United States. The children were identified using a third party panel provider that recruited adult panelists with children in the 7–12 age range who agreed to help guide their children through the activity.

We asked each child to draw her or his answer to the question, “What would you like your computer or the Internet to do that it can’t do right now?” We also interviewed parents regarding their children’s use of technology and participation in a number of online activities.

Latitude employed a coding scheme to score the presence of specific themes in children’s inventions (e.g., type of interface, degree of interactivity, physical-digital convergence, and user’s desired end-goal).

B Findings and discussion

In answer to the study question: What does the next generation of digital natives expect and desire from technology, and how does this differ across world regions? We found the following technology features to be equally desired by all the children in the study: intuitive interfaces (e.g., speech, touch screen), confers ability/knowledge, social/humanlike, and video tools.

The children expressed a desire to interact with technology more intuitively and they tended to characterize technology in terms that were fundamentally human. More than three-quarters of them (77 %) drew pictures that represented dynamic human-level responsiveness on the part of technology and 43 % drew themselves or another person interacting with their creations. Of the children who specified an interface, 20 % explicitly requested verbal/auditory controls as shown in figures 1.1a and 1.1b. Figure 1.1c indicates that parent interviews revealed that the expectation of voice-controlled technology was even more widespread.

This category intersected with aspects of proposals to make technology more social. Although future technology as a whole was characterized as humanlike, robots were represented as being more akin to humans than keyboards, PCs, or the Internet. Parent interviews supported this view. Figure 1.1d provides a typical example. Although anthropomorphism appeared in the suggestions of children from all geographic areas, there were regional and cultural differences within this category. Children in South Africa, India, and Latin America were more likely than those in Europe, Australia, and North America to anthropomorphize computers – to imagine them as friends or teachers that could share their experiences or help in the accomplishment of a goal (see Figure 1.1d).

Figure 1.1: Images of future technology; (a) boy, U.S.; (b) girl age 11, Denmark; (c) parent, girl age 7, Argentina; (d) parent, boy age 7, Colombia

Twenty-six percent of the children proposed ideas that facilitated sharing with others, such as friends, teachers, parents, and even the robot (figure 1.1d). In the interview about her drawing, a seven-year-old girl from the United States said, “I want to video kids on the other side of the world using a different kind of language.”

The category identified as “confers ability/knowledge” addresses the study question: How can we engage children as authors and inventors of future technology, not just passive recipients? It refers to wanting technology to provide quick and easy access to information that would empower users by fostering knowledge or otherwise “adult” skills, such as speaking a different language or learning how to cook. One-quarter of participants in South Africa and India imagined computers that would assist with or output knowledge (such as help solving a math problem), and 74 % of ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributing authors
• About the Editor
• Preface
• Part I: Images
• Part II: Frameworks and Guidelines
• Part III: Learning
• Part IV: Design
• Part V: Conclusion
• Index