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

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.

Department dc:contributor.department

Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Nandy, Palash

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Cynthia Breazeal.

• Program in Media Arts and Sciences ()

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106051

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/106051