A growing population of service and social robots are moving out of research labs and entering ‘the wild’ as mainstream consumer products.
When robots enter homes and workplaces, their human-like features and characteristics can help people to accept them.
But the ways we anthropomorphise robots – naming them, attributing gender, age, dressing them up – can lead to interesting flow on effects, including the risk of stereotyping.
Dr Giulia Perugia researches people’s interactions with robots and their implications for ethics, gender and inclusion, based at the Human Technology Interaction Group of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Petra Stock chats to Giulia about the tendency to anthropomorphise robots and the risks involved with gendering robots.
Want to know more about robots?
Watch: Machines with meaning: the ethics of robots
Listen: The Science Briefing: The double-edged sword of making robots more human
Read: Gendering robots is a cognitive shortcut that can lead to short circuits
Read: “The robot broke the child’s finger… this is of course bad”
Originally published by Cosmos as Human-robot interactions: how do people attribute gender to robots?
Petra Stock
Petra Stock has a degree in environmental engineering and a Masters in Journalism from University of Melbourne. She has previously worked as a climate and energy analyst.
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