The Importance of Representation in Robot Interaction

ABSTRACT : An artificial consciousness permeates globalized societies; technology is all around us, in science, in science fiction, in daily life. This relationship continues to be processual, technologies continue to move forward, assisting or, perhaps, encroaching on the human body. In modern society, we are increasingly becoming merged with the technology around us, wearing it and implanting it. This allows us to contemplate the merging of the organic and the inorganic. Bodies are being remapped by technology and rigid notions of subjectivity are reconfigured and societal norms are disrupted and shifted. Questions and issues regarding ability, identity, and a struggle for embedded agency in relation to technologies are principal concerns of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Immediately recognizable, culturally ubiquitous, androids, cyborgs, and robots, need no introduction. Yet their very familiarity obscures their meaning, this paper attempts to unpack how humans see these artificial humans and how we interpret their representation.

KEYWORDS: Robot, Android, Cyborg, Representation, Appearance, Human-Robot Interaction