What Makes a Social Robot Good at Interacting with Humans This paper discusses the nuances of a social robot, how and why social robots are becoming increasingly significant, and what they are currently being used for. This paper also reflects on the current design of social robots as a means of interaction with humans and also reports potential solutions about several important questions around the futuristic design of these robots. The specific questions explored in this paper are: xe2x80x9cDo social robots need to look like living creatures that already exist in the world for humans to interact well with them?xe2x80x9d; xe2x80x9cDo social robots need to have animated faces for humans to interact well with them?xe2x80x9d; xe2x80x9cDo social robots need to have the ability to speak a coherent human language for humans to interact well with them?xe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cDo social robots need to have the capability to make physical gestures for humans to interact well with them?xe2x80x9d. This paper reviews both verbal as well as nonverbal social and conversational cues that could be incorporated into the design of social robots, and also briefly discusses the emotional bonds that may be built between humans and robots. Facets surrounding acceptance of social robots by humans and also ethicalmoral concerns have also been discussed.

Enthusiastic Robots Make Better Contact This paper presents the design and evaluation of humanlike welcoming behaviors for a humanoid robot to draw the attention of passersby by following a threestep model: (1) selecting a target (person) to engage, (2) executing behaviors to draw the targetxe2x80x99s attention, and (3) monitoring the attentive response. A computer vision algorithm was developed to select the person, start the behaviors and monitor the response automatically. To vary the robotxe2x80x99s enthusiasm when engaging passersby, a waving gesture was designed as basic welcoming behavioral element, which could be successively combined with an utterance and an approach movement. This way, three levels of enthusiasm were implemented: Mild (waving), moderate (waving and utterance) and high (waving, utterance and approach movement). The three levels of welcoming behaviors were tested with a Pepper robot at the entrance of a university building. We recorded data and observation sheets from several hundreds of passersby (N 364) and conducted postinterviews with randomly selected passersby (N 28). The level selection was done at random for each participant. The passersby indicated that they appreciated the robot at the entrance and clearly recognized its role as a welcoming robot. In addition, the robot proved to draw more attention when showing high enthusiasm (i.e., more welcoming behaviors), particularly for female passersby.