Examples of Applications

Applications of the social robotics–related technology described above follow:

The Loving AI project was research into the emotional impact of interacting with kind, loving humanoid embodiments. We have used Sophia the robot in conjunction with GHOST and our emotionrRecognition deep neural network in this research. We have used 17 this configuration in IRB-approved research trials in Hong Kong in 2017 (N=26) and San Francisco in 2018 (N=35). Preliminary results show that interactions, specifically guided meditation sessions with audiovisual components, emotionally responsive dialogue, and facial expression mirroring, did lead to increased well-being and more positive feelings. The results also suggest that humanoid robots or audiovisual avatars are more effective at this than a purely audio-based interface.

The General Holistic Organism Scripting Tool (GHOST) is also being used as a conversational agent within the Mozi computational biology project. There, handcrafted rule bases have been written to guide the user through a constrained, yet natural, language dialogue. Several key components have been developed to interface this conversational agent to the experimental setup used within the project in order to provide a more fluid and natural interface to a vast plethora of possible configurations.