Nicola Fankhauser DIUF - Department of Informatics University of Fribourg, Switzerland March 2003 Social Context Awareness in Pervasive Computing

Overview 1.Introduction 2.Problems of Pervasive Computing 3.A Sociable Robot called Kismet 4.Movie: Introduction to Kismet 5.Kismet's Systems 6.Social Responses (plus Movie) 7.Context awareness and social robots 8.Conclusion

Introduction ● Many small, mobile devices are part of our daily life ● Question: Why do cellular phones ring in the middle of a classical concert? ● Answer: They do not know about social context. ● Problem: How do I make 'dumb' devices understand social context?

Problems of modeling Context ● How to model context? – Many have failed. ● Model too complex – Too much code: impossible to manage – Still explicit, implanted model ● Model too simple – Paradox: Behaves sometimes worse than without context

A sociable Robot called Kismet ● AI Lab at MIT created baby-like Robot ● Kismet likes – Faces – playing with Toys – Movements ● Kismet can express 'feelings' and 'intentions'

Attention System ● Stereo color vision system ● Kismet searches for motion ● Attention System influenced by – Motivational state – Emotional state

Motivation System ● Drives (de: Triebe, fr: force végétative) with optimal operation point: – Social drive – Stimulation drive – Fatigue drive ● Emotions – Arousal (high, neutral or low) (de: Erregung, fr: excitation) – Valence (positive, neutral or negative) – Stance (open, neutral or closed) (de: Einstellung, fr: attitude)

Behavior System (1) ● Question: How to act? ● A Winner-Takes-All Game ● Loosely layered hierarchy ● Takes input from – Social, Fatigue and Stimulation Drive – Perception of People and Toys

Behavior System (2)

Motor System ● Takes input from – Emotional System – Behavior System ● Face expressions result, like – Fear – Happiness – Interest – Sadness

Social Responses ● Affective responses: Face changes expression ● Exploratory responses: Visual search for desired stimuli ● Protective reponses: Turn away the head from unwanted stimuli ● Regulatory responses: Habituation to unchanging stimuli

Context Awareness and Social Robots ● Artificial Intelligence researchers are not working together with Pervasive Computing researchers. ● Reason: They have a very different background – AI's vision: bring reality to machine – Pervasive Computing's vision: augment reality with machines ● Why not join forces?