An Analysis Of Azuma Hikari's 'Gatebox'

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Gatebox, then, possess all three modalities - it is equipped with visual recognition, audio recognition, and it activates with a touch sensor.
In addition, interfacing with social machines such as Azuma Hikari belongs specifically to the human-robot interaction area. (Hikari does not possess a physical body and is more akin to a hologram than an android, but we can classify her a social “robot” because she is designed to interact with people in a social context.) Human-robot interaction is a discipline that gained traction since the mid 90s and is now quickly growing in the field of social AIs: while for a long time robots weren’t accessible to non professionals and didn’t offer the possibility of social interaction (i.e. industrial robots), …show more content…

Azuma Hikari can provide both types of interaction. As the promotional commercials show, the character is able to send texts to their owner, granting the possibility for remote communication. Moreover, Goodrich and Schultz note it is useful to make a distinction between devices that require mobility, physical manipulation, or social interaction, and observe that “Importantly, social interactions with robots appear to be proximate rather than remote” (2007, p. 205). Gatebox is thus a rare example of a socially interactive AI providing remote communication.
In this chapter we shall focus on the social aspect of human-machine interactions. On the topic of social robots, it is also necessary to understand how and why human-robot social interactions work. Using the metaphor of the cyborg, a human being with mechanical parts, Haraway argued as early as 1985 that the biological aspects of life and the use of technological tools are now inextricably intertwined, to the point where we cannot distinguish between what makes something “real” and “alive” or not, and that is why we respond socially to robots (Halpern, Katz, 2013). Research so far seems to confirm our social predispositions towards robots. In Nass’s experiments

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