Suspension of disbelief in social robotics

Abstract

This paper discusses people's willingness to suspend their beliefs of what is living in physical social robotics. Our attention focuses on users' perception of the machines they interact with, in particular how much fiction can persist in human-robot interaction. We expand on this concept of suspension of disbelief (SoD) in order to understand the role and nature of user engagement in robotics and to discuss a balance between fantasy and realism, between user expectation and the design challenges faced by robotics.