No Joking Aside – Using Humor to Establish Sociality in HRI

Peter H. Kahn, Jr.1, Jolina H. Ruckert1, Takayuki Kanda2, Hiroshi Ishiguro2,3, Heather E. Gary1, & Solace Shen1

1Department of Psychology University of Washington

Seattle, WA, USA [pkahn], [jhr333], [hgary],

[solaces]@uw.edu

2Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratory

ATR Kyoto, Japan

kanda@atr.jp

3Department of Systems Innovation Osaka University

Osaka, Japan ishiguro@sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp

ABSTRACT This paper shows how humor can be used as an interaction pattern to help establish sociality in human-robot interaction. Drawing illustratively from our published research on people interacting with ATR’s humanoid robot Robovie, we highlight four forms of humor that we successfully implemented: wit and the ice-breaker, corny joke, subtle humor, and dry humor and self-deprecation.

Categories and Subject Descriptors K.4.2 [Computers and Society]: Social Issues

General Terms Design, Human Factors, Theory

Keywords human-robot interaction, interaction patterns, humor

1. HUMOR IN HRI Practical jokes, jibs, puns, wit, banter, comebacks, good, bad, pick-ups, put-downs, dark humor, wise cracks, punch lines, parodies, pranks, quips, one-liners, and all in jest. Humor is foundational to our social lives. It can bring people closer together, enhance self-disclosure, engender appreciation, ease tension, and defuse conflict [1]. Humor is fun. It’s laughter. It’s part of what makes us human.

Researchers in HCI and HRI have only begun to explore how humor in and around personified technological systems affects the resulting interactions. For example, it has been found that humor enhances the likability of computer interfaces [2], and improves interactions with natural language systems [3]. In turn, HRI researchers have found that nonverbal humor displayed in gestures, facial expressions, or body movements create likable robots and enjoyable interactions [4]. CMU researchers [5] created a comedian robot that begins its set with a pre-programmed array of jokes and then chooses jokes based on response laughter from the audience. Invariably, the robot saves the “best” jokes for last.

In this paper, we show how humor can be used as an interaction pattern to enhance if not establish sociality in HRI. By interaction patterns we mean characterizations of essential features of social interaction between humans and robots, specified abstractly enough such that many different instantiations of the interaction can be uniquely realized given different types of robots, purposes, and contexts of use. Established interaction patterns include introduction, walking side-by-side, didactic communication, sharing personal interests and history, recovering from mistake, prosocial behavior, physical intimacy, such as hugging, and reciprocal turn-taking in a game context. We have presented our pattern analysis previously at HRI [6], and this pattern analysis has helped structure some of our HRI empirical studies [7, 8]. In what follows, we present 4 forms of humor that we successfully implemented with adults interacting with ATR’s humanoid robot, Robovie. For each form, we point to how we see the humor enhancing the human-robot interaction. The implementations with the robot were achieved through a Wizard of Oz interface.

1.1 Wit and the Ice-Breaker In one study we began the human-robot interaction with humor. Following the introduction, and just after the experimenter has left Robovie and the participant alone for the first time, Robovie says to the participant “I bet it’s not every day you find yourself chatting with a robot.” This is an understated quip that initiates an easy and light tone in the interaction. It breaks the ice. Often participants respond with something along the lines of “Yeah, not every day” or “That’s true” and will laugh lightly. Other participants find it funny and they laugh or chuckle hard. Then there are the participants who respond back with light humor, saying, for example, with a polished voice, “No, probably never before (laughter).” Humor is hard to execute well during an initial introduction between people who have never before met. But done well, the right level of humor in the first few moments of an interaction can create a relaxed social exchange.

1.2 Corny Joke While a participant and Robovie worked together on a rock garden design, Robovie paused from the activity to make a joke: “What did the rock do when it rolled down the road? [Pause.] It rock ‘n’ rolled!” Robovie then apologized for the corny joke, and admitted to liking them. Participants sometimes followed Robovie’s apology with reassuring support. One participant said “That’s not that corny. Actually I’ve heard worse.” Another participant said, “Well, that was a good one.” Another said, “(Hardy laugh) That was funny, that wasn’t corny!”. And another offered comradeship: “(Laughs hard) Me too.” Such corny jokes

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are good clean fun. They work in a variety of settings and for a range of audiences.

1.3 Subtle Humor The corny joke described above was employed to create a softened space where the robot can then ask a challenging, morally laden question about animal rights. Robovie points to a necklace made of animal bone on a nearby desk and asks: “One of the experimenters brought it back from his trip abroad. Some of the other experimenters do not think it is okay to possess things made of animals. What do you think?” After the person responded to the question Robovie agreed with the sentiment and then cracks the following subtle joke. They are just leaving the rock garden, and Robovie says: “Let me show you our other garden. This one actually has some plants.” The joke sometimes engendered soft laughter. It was used to help transition from discussion on a serious topic (of animal rights) to the next part of the interaction.

1.4 Dry Humor and Self-Deprecation In another study on whether people hold a humanoid robot morally accountable for the harm it causes [7], Robovie, which moves on wheels, uses the compliment “I like your shoes…” to set up the joke: “If I had feet I would wear shoes just like your shoes.” We scripted the self-directed slight in order to capture a sense of humor coupled with vulnerability. Robovie concludes: “That was my attempt at a joke. Sorry about that.” The following two examples will be accompanied with corresponding video clips at the HRI 2014 poster session:

Example 1: Robovie compliments and the participant replies: “Oh thank you.” Robovie further says: “They’re quite nice” And the participant responds: “Thank you, they’re new actually.” Then Robovie comes in with the joke and the participant states, laughing: “Yeah. They’d look good on you.” Robovie apologizes and the participant laughs and reassures the robot: “That wasn’t that bad, better than my jokes (more laughter).”

Example 2: After the compliment the participant laughs and states: “Oh, thank you, they’re dirty” laughing again as Robovie cracks the joke. Continuing, with laughter: “Oh, I’m sure.” She points to Robovie’s wheels and announces “(laughter) but you have wheels.” When Robovie apologizes for the humor the participant softly places her hand on Robovie: “(laughter) Oh no, it’s funny” and concludes with a chuckle.

The self-directed slight opens space for a social partner to offer support or encouragement. The participant in example 1 even mimics Robovie’s self-deprecation by putting down his own jokes. The use of humor to normalize experiences can help bond social partners [2].

2. CONCLUSION Our basic idea here is that the HRI community has a powerful but to date largely unrecognized means to develop sociality in human-robot interaction – and that is through humor. Moreover, we propose that humor itself be conceptualized as an additional interaction pattern, as described earlier [6, 7, 8].

It’s possible to isolate individual interaction patterns, as we have done with humor, to bring each to the foreground of awareness

and understanding. However, in practice the power of interaction patterns lies in their numbers, sequencing, and constellations. You can think of interaction patterns as like words in a written or spoken language. Each word has an individual meaning, but they gain meaning when they are put together in a semantically coherent, relevant, and rich dialog. Thus in the same way that words can be thought of as primitives in a language, our proposition is that interaction patterns be understood as primitives for establishing sociality in human-robot interaction.

3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos IIS-0905289 and IIS-0842832. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This work was also in part supported by the JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Nos. 21118008 and 25240042, and by JSPS Core-to-Core Program, A. Advanced Research Networks.

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