Toward sociable robots

This paper explores the topic of social robots-the class of robots that people anthropomorphize in order to interact with them. From the diverse and growing number of applications for such robots, a few distinct modes of interaction are beginning to emerge. We distinguish four such classes: socially evocative, social interface, socially receptive, and sociable. For the remainder of the paper, we explore a few key features of sociable robots that distinguish them from the others. We use the vocal turn-taking behavior of our robot, Kismet, as a case study to highlight these points. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.