Robots in my contact list : Using social media platforms for human-robot interaction in domestic environment

Abstract

This thesis explores the application of existing social media platforms for humanrobot interaction. With increasing popularity of social media platforms that connect humans, we propose to portray domestic robots also as buddies on the contact list of family members, thereby extending social connections among humans further to domestic robots. This proposed approach can contribute a more social, user-familiar, and natural interface for interacting with domestic robots. In detail, we developed a working system that includes four complementary social media platforms: short message services (SMS), instant messenger (IM ), online shared calendar (Calendar), and social networking sites (Facebook). Hence, users can select and seamlessly switch among interfaces upon their needs and preference. The characteristics and strengths of these platforms are carefully studied and compared, and a user study is also devised in this work to investigate the user operations in the course of robot interaction.