Traditionally, the human robot interaction systems are based on a master-slave idea. According to this idea, the human operator role is to supervise and give orders to the robot, while the robot role is to accomplish those tasks and eventually, to give the necessary information to the operator. The robot essentially acts as a tool used by the operator. In these systems, the interaction with the human appears to be a limiting factor that reduces the robot?s autonomy.
The goal of this project is to develop social robots with a high degree of autonomy. The robot?s behaviour will be based on their own impulses and motivations. These motivations are the mechanisms of the robot to keep certain internal variables, related to its necessities, near to an ideal level. Inside the control architecture of the robot, the human-robot interaction will be organized using the same principles of the interaction of the robot with the rest of the world.
The social aspect of the robot will be reflected in the fact that human interaction will be not considered only as a complement of the rest of the robot?s functionalities, but as one of its basic features. This will be showed through the development of a wide set of social skills, as well as social motivations.
This approach to the human-robot interaction might be quite interesting for some kind of new robots, such as robots interacting peer to peer with humans, entertainment robots, teaching robots and even, therapeutic robots.