Facilitating human-robot interaction by implementing humour in robots

Abstract

Hollywood saw it coming; robots have not been around for very long, but their technology has improved rapidly and it is now an easy task for a layman to envision a future where robots comfortably fit in our society alongside us humans. To function in social spaces robots will have to be socially attuned, but research on human-robot interactions have mostly been sidelined in favour of advancing the more technical aspects of robotics and mechatronics. This report will address this dearth by exploring the effectiveness of various types of humour in human-robot interactions. An experiment was conducted with 51 undergraduates from Nanyang Technological University, half of whom viewed videos of a human actor delivering different types of jokes, while the other half viewed similar videos only the actor was now a robot. They then rated the perceived funniness, enjoyment, defensiveness and potential for offensiveness of the individual jokes. This study brings new insight on how humour may be incorporated into robots and illustrates how close we are to realising a future where it is acceptable, and even a norm, for robots to crack jokes.