About

The project SERA (Social Engagement with Robots and Agents) aims to advance science in the field of social acceptability of verbally interactive robots and agents, with a view to their applications especially in assistive technologies (companions, virtual butlers). To this aim, the project will undertake a field study in three iterations to collect data of real-life, long-term and open-ended relationships of subjects with robotic devices. The three iterations test different conditions (functionalities) of the equipment, which will consist of a room equipped with sensors at the subjects’ home, a computer and a simple robotic device (the Nabaztag) as the front-end for interaction. The project partners will analyse the collected audio and video data in parallel, using different, mainly qualitative, methods. Data analysis will be prepared and accompanied by theoretical and methodological research in order to a) take into account the state of the art and b) ensure quality of the field study. The project will use findings from the field study to specify, build and implement a reference architecture for social engagement, and use it for developing a showcase system of combined speech based service applications with relevance to the target field and audience.