Feel with Me: From Simulation Theory to Empathetic Encounters in Human-Robot Interaction

Abstract

This thesis critically evaluates the use of the concept of empathy within the discourses of social robotics and elaborates an alternative framework that could inform new modes of human-robot interaction (HRI). This thesis shows how the definition and implementation of empathy in social robots is largely based on a theory of social cognition, namely Simulation Theory. The author proposes that this vision of empathy is both theoretically insufficient and overtly anthropocentric, as it links empathy with the imitation of human movement, similarities between the human and the robot, and the false distinction between internal and self-contained emotions and external expressive movement. In order to account for a different understanding of empathy in HRI, the author turns to the artistic work of Marco Donnarumma, arguing that his 7 Configurations Cycle implies a new mode of empathy between humans and robots that is based on a coordination and a co-creation of affective movement rather than an imitation of human motion.

To delve into what the author’s reading of Donnarumma’s work implies for empathy in HRI, this thesis evaluates Susan Leigh Foster’s and Dee Reynolds’s research on kinaesthetic empathy and Dan Zahavi’s study of phenomenological empathy. This theoretical framework allows the author to conceptualise empathy in terms of a pre-reflexive resonance, a perception, and a coupling. The author then brings these two fields of study into conversation through Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s research on movement dynamics. Along with the author’s own contribution to how empathy can be considered a performative process, as well as a performance, this thesis develops a new paradigm for addressing empathy in HRI: empathetic encounters. In empathetic encounters, a coordination of movement dynamics takes place that allows two or more entities to be kinetically and affectively attuned to each other. This coordination is performed (in the sense of Erika Fischter-Lichte notion of co-presence) and brings about affective states that are co-created by the entities who are present in the empathetic encounters (in this way being performative, following Judith Butler’s ideas on the matter). This paradigm is then brought back to the field of social robotics by a case study analysis of Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders's robotic project Performative Body Mapping. Looking at their project through the lens of empathetic encounters offers a perspective on how this theoretical framework could inform the design of social robots. Finally, the thesis argues that the notion of empathetic encounters offers a better paradigm for understanding non-human morphologies than that currently offered in social robotics discourses.