CIRC: Planning-C: Embodied Social Intelligence Community Research Infrastructure

Robots that can interact well with humans need social and emotional intelligence, especially in domains such as healthcare and companionship. The project team will repurpose a pool of Jibo robots and make them a community resource for research on human-robot interaction. To create such a platform, the team must engage with different research communities.

First, this project will gather scientists and researchers to understand their needs. Then, the research team will make a list of requirements to define new tools and resources. The requirements will include a social robot research platform and AI algorithms.

The project will also find ways to make these research resources accessible. It will include websites and forums where researchers can learn from each other. The research platform will be available for many different researchers and institutions.

This will promote education and inclusivity. This project can make positive impacts on our society in many ways. First, it will benefit society by improving human-AI interactions.

AI and robots will be more useful and easier to use. Second, the platform will support AI education for K-12 and higher education. It will help diverse students learn about AI and/or learn with it.

They can learn about AI's responsible and ethical design and get hands-on experiences. Students can design, deploy, and test their own social AI solutions. Lastly, this project will also foster collaboration between academia and industry. This partnership is a key to advancing AI research for community social good.

This project involves a four-step community participatory design process. First, the project will share the Jibo research platform with research labs for hands-on experiences. The second step involves completing a comprehensive survey to gather community needs.

During the third step, the project team will host workshops to show the platform to the community. From these workshops they will request feedback from different research communities. The last step involves analyzing the data.

Then the project team will refine the platform development, distribution, and sustainment guidelines. The project team will lead the discussion for the scope of the infrastructure. This will include: the development of a social intelligence taxonomy and benchmark datasets.

The final project outcome will be to develop a living-lab framework for large-scale and longitudinal studies.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.