Regulation and entrainment in human-robot interaction

Newly emerging robotics applications,for domestic or entertainment purposes are slowly introducing autonomous robots into society at large. A critical capability of such robots is their ability to interact with humans, and in particular, untrained users. In this paper we explore the hypothesis that people will intuitively interact with robots in a natural social manner provided the robot can perceive, interpret, and appropriately respond with familiar human social cues. Two experiments are presented where naive human subjects interact with an anthropomorphic robot. We present evidence for mutual regulation and entrainment of the interaction, and we discuss how this benefits the interaction as a whole.