This is because if robots are ever to become part of our day-to-day life, it’s important to understand how people make sense of robots. And it is important to ask lots of different people. This is so roboticists and researchers can make robots that people know how to use and are happy to be around. Otherwise, robots can end up being quite unhelpful – like when one woman was trying to report a nearby fight to a security robot called Knightscope, but it just told her to ‘step out the way’. (This type of robot is also famous for falling into a fountain in the shopping centre it was supposed to be protecting...)
One researcher trying to improve the way robots interact with people is Dr Thalia Gjersoe from the University of Bath. She worked with us to explore questions like:
- Do people think that robots have human traits? This is known as ‘anthropomorphism’ and could include things like do people think that robots have feelings?
- How do children’s understanding of robots change as they grow up?
- Does spending time and getting used to a robot change how people think about it?
Sometimes anthropomorphising robots can be a good thing, because people may be happier to work with robots that seems more like us. But it can also lead to people putting too much trust in robots because they think the robot is more capable than it is, like Knightscope. So we need to know how and when anthropomorphism happens to design robots that people can understand.
To explore these questions, we invited people to a game of robot football in our Open City Lab. Before the game, we asked people questions like “Do you think robots have feelings?”. Then they spent time with the robots, decorating them ready for the match and then cheering on their team on the pitch. After the game, we asked people what they thought about robots again.
We found that people’s opinions had changed after the football game. People were less likely to think that the robots had feelings after they had spent time with the robots. And the older children were, the less likely they were to anthropomorphise robots.
Helen Della Nave, Head of Open City Research at We The Curious said “It was exciting to see so many people taking part in the research process - 4000 people contributed to the programme, about 800 children and 600 adults got involved in the experiment and another 400 people shared ideas with Thalia to shape the future direction of the research!”
We caught up with Thalia about her experience and what she has been up to since Robot Revolution…
What was something that surprised you about how people responded to the robots?
We don’t know exactly how anthropomorphism changes over childhood, so we were surprised by some of the results. Children tended to anthropomorphise less as they got older, which we did expect. But what was surprising was the age at which the majority of children thought about robots more like adults do. It was older than we thought it would be – about 12 years rather than 9 years. We were also surprised to find that all visitors above 5 years of age anthropomorphised the robots a lot less after briefly using them than they did beforehand.
What happened next?
The results from Robot Revolution have been shared with lots of different people. Everyone from children in schools to computer scientists and roboticists. The findings are being prepared for publication in a journal and are part of my teaching to university students.
These are some of the places where we’ve shared what we’ve found out:
- I have done talks at primary schools, in public lecture series, and at the Bath Royal Literary and Science Institute, and at a panel discussion at the ASDC conference
- I also entered a poster about Robot Revolution into a competition. It now lives in the hallway of our building for staff and students to see every day.
- Aquila children’s science magazine did a special issue on robots that also featured Robot Revolution.
How has Robot Revolution influenced your work?
Robot Revolution was a genuine co-creation between We The Curious, myself and all the visitors who took part in our various practice runs and gave us feedback. We did 4 or 5 pilots to get the activity to the point where it really worked. Having comments from people about their understanding of robots helped to answer our questions about anthropomorphism. All these insights have informed how I do research with children in other contexts.
What have you been working on since?
I learned a huge amount from working with the families at We The Curious. Not just what does and doesn’t work, but also ways to share information simply so anyone can get involved. I am now extending what I have learned to explore children’s questions about science and technology associated with climate change.
Is there anything you would like to tell visitors now?
Your engagement with Robot Revolution was so important in affecting the way we do science! We really benefited from people’s expertise and experiences to tell us what worked and what didn’t – everyone has something to offer, and I learned such a lot from you all!
Find out more
Visit the Open City Research area of our website if you'd like to find out more about this area of our work, which is about giving everyone the opportunity to be part of the scientific research process.
Image credits:
Top header image - Simon Galloway
Robot Revolution images - Lisa Whiting