Developing Self-Awareness in Robots via Inner Speech

The experience of inner speech is a common one. Such a dialogue accompanies the introspection of mental life and fulfills essential roles in human behavior, such as self-restructuring, self-regulation, and re-focusing on attentional resources. Although the underpinning of inner speech is mostly investigated in psychological and philosophical fields, the research in robotics generally does not address such a form of self-aware behavior. Existing models of inner speech inspire computational tools to provide a robot with this form of self-awareness. Here, the widespread psychological models of inner speech are reviewed, and a cognitive architecture for a robot implementing such a capability is outlined in a simplified setup

Robot's Inner Speech Effects on Trust and Anthropomorphic Cues in Human-Robot Cooperation

Inner Speech is an essential but also elusive human psychological process which refers to an everyday covert internal conversation with oneself. We argue that programming a robot with an overt self-talk system, which simulates human inner speech, might enhance human trust by improving robot transparency and anthropomorphism. For this reasons, this work aims to investigate if robot’s inner speech, here intended as overt self-talk, affects human trust and anthropomorphism when human and robot cooperate. A group of participants was engaged in collaboration with the robot. During cooperation, the robot talks to itself. To evaluate if the robot’s inner speech influences human trust, two questionnaires were administered to each participant before (pre-test) and after (post-test) the cooperative session with the robot. Preliminary results evidenced differences between the answers of participants in the pre-test and post-test assessment, suggesting that robot’s inner speech influences human trust. Indeed, participant’s levels of trust and perception of robot anthropomorphic features increase after the experimental interaction with the robot

Robot’s Inner Speech Effects on Human Trust and Anthropomorphism

Inner Speech is an essential but also elusive human psychological process that refers to an everyday covert internal conversation with oneself. We argued that programming a robot with an overt self-talk system that simulates human inner speech could enhance both human trust and users’ perception of robot’s anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, intelligence and safety. For this reason, we planned a pre-test/post-test control group design. Participants were divided in two different groups, one experimental group and one control group. Participants in the experimental group interacted with the robot Pepper equipped with an over inner speech system whereas participants in the control group interacted with the robot that produces only outer speech. Before and after the interaction, both groups of participants were requested to complete some questionnaires about inner speech and trust. Results showed differences between participants’ pretest and post-test assessment responses, suggesting that the robot’s inner speech influences in participants of experimental group the perceptions of animacy and intelligence in robot. Implications for these results are discussed

What robots want? Hearing the inner voice of a robot

The inner speech is thoroughly studied in humans, and it represents an interdisciplinary research issue involving psychology, neuroscience, and pedagogy. A few papers only, mostly theoretical, analyze the role of inner speech in robots. The present study investigates the potential of the robot's inner speech while cooperating with human partners. A cognitive architecture is designed and integrated with standard robot routines into a complex framework. Two threads of interaction are discussed by setting the robot operations with and without inner speech. Thanks to the robotic self-dialog, the partner can easily trace the robot's processes. Moreover, the robot can better solve conflicts leading to successful goal achievements. The results show that functional and transparency requirements, according to the international standards ISO/TS:2016 and COMEST/Unesco for collaborative robots, are better met when inner speech accompanies human-robot interaction. The inner speech could be applied in many robotics contexts, such as learning, regulation, and attentio

Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

Integration of Action and Language Knowledge: A Roadmap for Developmental Robotics

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