Is a robot a social being?

Thursday, May 23, 2019

What makes a machine more than just a piece of hardware? Do we form relationships with our technology? How should we be teaching robots to act? And what are they teaching us?

These are just some of the questions that Kerstin Dautenhahn is exploring as the Canada 150 Research Chair in Intelligent Robotics. Dautenhahn joined the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering in 2018 to establish the new Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory.

But advancing state of the art of technology for social and intelligent robots is only part of her research agenda.

“Just because you can build something, doesn’t mean you should,” says Dautenhahn. “We need to understand people’s intentions and expectations towards robots and investigate possible consequences of the robots we build.”