AISB’05: Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents Proceedings of the Symposium on Robotics, Mechatronics and Animatronics in the Creative and Entertainment Industries and Arts 12 - 15 April 2005 University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK SSAISB 2005 Convention U H AISB’05 Convention Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents 12-15 April 2005 University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK Proceedings of the Symposium on Robotics, Mechatronics and Animatronics in the Creative and Entertainment Industries and Arts (aka the Creative Robotics Symposium) Published by The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour www.aisb.org.uk Printed by The University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB UK www.herts.ac.uk Cover Design by Sue Attwood ISBN 1 902956 43 3 AISB’05 Hosted by The Adaptive Systems Research Group adapsys.feis.herts.ac.uk The AISB'05 Convention is partially supported by: The proceedings of the ten symposia in the AISB’05 Convention are available from SSAISB: Second International Symposium on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication (EELC'05) 1 902956 40 9 Agents that Want and Like: Motivational and Emotional Roots of Cognition and Action 1 902956 41 7 Third International Symposium on Imitation in Animals and Artifacts 1 902956 42 5 Robotics, Mechatronics and Animatronics in the Creative and Entertainment Industries and Arts 1 902956 43 3 Robot Companions: Hard Problems and Open Challenges in Robot-Human Interaction 1 902956 44 1 Conversational Informatics for Supporting Social Intelligence and Interaction - Situational and Environmental Information Enforcing Involvement in Conversation 1 902956 45 X Next Generation approaches to Machine Consciousness: Imagination, Development, Intersubjectivity, and Embodiment 1 902956 46 8 Normative Multi-Agent Systems 1 902956 47 6 Socially Inspired Computing Joint Symposium (Memetic theory in artificial systems & societies, Emerging Artificial Societies, and Engineering with Social Metaphors) 1 902956 48 4 Virtual Social Agents Joint Symposium (Social presence cues for virtual humanoids, Empathic Interaction with Synthetic Characters, Mind-minding Agents) 1 902956 49 2 Table of Contents The AISB’05 Convention - Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents……… i K.Dautenhahn Symposium Preface - Robotics, Mechatronics and Animatronics in the Creative and Entertainment Industries and Arts …………………………………………………………………….. iv Tony Hirst & Ashley Green A Recent History? SAM, The Senster and the Bandit: Early Cybernetic Sculptures by Edward Ihnatowicz……………... 1 Aleksandar Zivanovic Reaching Out… The Development and Effectiveness of the CYCLER Educational Presentation Robots……………... 8 Martin Smith & David Buckley Robot thought – A Dialogue Event for Family Audiences………………………….………………… 14 Karen Bultitude, Ben Johnson, Frank Burnet, Dylan Evans & Alan Winfield A Lifelike Robotic Policeman with Realistic Motion and Speech……………………………………. 22 Martin Smith & David Buckley Giving it Meaning… iCat: Experimenting with Animabotics………………………………………………………………... 27 Albert van Breemen Real Tech Support for Robotics……………………………………………………………………….. 33 Marc Böhlen Narrative in Robotics Scenarios for Art Works……………………………………………………….. 40 Daniel A. Bisig & Adrianne Wortzel State of the Art… ‘Stigmergy’: Biologically-Inspired Robotics Art……………………………………………………... 45 Mike Blow Osama Seeker………………………………………………………………………………………….. 53 Darren Southee, Julie Henry & Giles Perry There Does Not, in Fact, Appear to be a Plan: A Collaborative Experiment in Creative Robotics…... 58 Jon Bird, Bill Bigge, Mike Blow, Richard Brown, Ed Clive, Rowena Easton, Tom Grimsey, Garvin Haslett & Andy Webster The AISB’05 Convention Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents Above all, the human animal is social. For an artificially intelligent system, how could it be otherwise? We stated in our Call for Participation “The AISB’05 convention with the theme Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents aims to facilitate the synthesis of new ideas, encourage new insights as well as novel applications, mediate new collaborations, and provide a context for lively and stimulating discussions in this exciting, truly interdisciplinary, and quickly growing research area that touches upon many deep issues regarding the nature of intelligence in human and other animals, and its potential application to robots and other artefacts”. Why is the theme of Social Intelligence and Interaction interesting to an Artificial Intelligence and Ro- botics community? We know that intelligence in humans and other animals has many facets and is ex- pressed in a variety of ways in how the individual in its lifetime - or a population on an evolutionary timescale - deals with, adapts to, and co-evolves with the environment. Traditionally, social or emo- tional intelligence have been considered different from a more problem-solving, often called "rational", oriented view of human intelligence. However, more and more evidence from a variety of different research fields highlights the important role of social, emotional intelligence and interaction across all facets of intelligence in humans. The Convention theme Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents reflects a current trend towards increasingly interdisciplinary approaches that are pushing the boundaries of tradi- tional science and are necessary in order to answer deep questions regarding the social nature of intelli- gence in humans and other animals, as well as to address the challenge of synthesizing computational agents or robotic artifacts that show aspects of biological social intelligence. Exciting new develop- ments are emerging from collaborations among computer scientists, roboticists, psychologists, sociolo- gists, cognitive scientists, primatologists, ethologists and researchers from other disciplines, e.g. lead- ing to increasingly sophisticated simulation models of socially intelligent agents, or to a new generation of robots that are able to learn from and socially interact with each other or with people. Such interdis- ciplinary work advances our understanding of social intelligence in nature, and leads to new theories, models, architectures and designs in the domain of Artificial Intelligence and other sciences of the arti- ficial. New advancements in computer and robotic technology facilitate the emergence of multi-modal "natu- ral" interfaces between computers or robots and people, including embodied conversational agents or robotic pets/assistants/companions that we are increasingly sharing our home and work space with. People tend to create certain relationships with such socially intelligent artifacts, and are even willing to accept them as helpers in healthcare, therapy or rehabilitation. Thus, socially intelligent artifacts are becoming part of our lives, including many desirable as well as possibly undesirable effects, and Artifi- cial Intelligence and Cognitive Science research can play an important role in addressing many of the huge scientific challenges involved. Keeping an open mind towards other disciplines, embracing work from a variety of disciplines studying humans as well as non-human animals, might help us to create artifacts that might not only do their job, but that do their job right. Thus, the convention hopes to provide a home for state-of-the-art research as well as a discussion fo- rum for innovative ideas and approaches, pushing the frontiers of what is possible and/or desirable in this exciting, growing area. The feedback to the initial Call for Symposia Proposals was overwhelming. Ten symposia were ac- cepted (ranging from one-day to three-day events), organized by UK, European as well as international experts in the field of Social Intelligence and Interaction. i • Second International Symposium on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Commu- nication (EELC'05) • Agents that Want and Like: Motivational and Emotional Roots of Cognition and Action • Third International Symposium on Imitation in Animals and Artifacts • Robotics, Mechatronics and Animatronics in the Creative and Entertainment Industries and Arts • Robot Companions: Hard Problems and Open Challenges in Robot-Human Interaction • Conversational Informatics for Supporting Social Intelligence and Interaction - Situ- ational and Environmental Information Enforcing Involvement in Conversation • Next Generation Approaches to Machine Consciousness: Imagination, Development, In- tersubjectivity, and Embodiment • Normative Multi-Agent Systems • Socially Inspired Computing Joint Symposium (consisting of three themes: Memetic Theory in Artificial Systems & Societies, Emerging Artificial Societies, and Engineering with Social Metaphors) • Virtual Social Agents Joint Symposium (consisting of three themes: Social Presence Cues for Virtual Humanoids, Empathic Interaction with Synthetic Characters, Mind- minding Agents) I would like to thank the symposium organizers for their efforts in helping to put together an excellent scientific programme. In order to complement the programme, five speakers known for pioneering work relevant to the con- vention theme accepted invitations to present plenary lectures at the convention: Prof. Nigel Gilbert (University of Surrey, UK), Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University, Japan), Dr. Alison Jolly (Univer- sity of Sussex, UK), Prof. Luc Steels (VUB, Belgium and Sony, France), and Prof. Jacqueline Nadel (National