Experimenting Meaning in Human-Robot Interactions

Joffrey Becker, Virginie André, Alain Dutech

Abstract: How do we make sense of a robot's behavior? In this article, we address what has often been presented as a natural human tendency to become animist when facing a social-like machine. Leaning on an interdisciplinary experiment, we will focus on the terms used by a group of human participants to describe and qualify the behavior of a robotic lamp. By studying the semantic spaces occupied by the words used to describe the movements of the machine, we will see that the meaning given to its activity is based on various known elements which also depend directly on the very experience of the participants. This experiment will help us to address the cognition involved during human-robot interactions.