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November 14, 2012

Robot Helps Understand Human Social Cues

Dave DeSteno (left), professor of psychology at Northeastern University, and Jin Joo Lee (right), a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), pose with the robot Nexi. Nexi studies and mimics human gestures as they relate to trust between people--part of a research collaborative that includes Northeastern University, MIT and Cornell University. DeSteno is looking at how humans decide whether to trust other humans when meeting for the first time. He's also studying specific gestures that human's make, which they have found are mimicked by the other person in face-to-face interactions. The mimicking allows them to get a sense of how the other is feeling and whether or not they will trust another person.

To read more about DeSteno's work with Nexi, see the Northeastern news story Trusty Robot Helps Us Understand Human Social Cues. [Research supported by National Science Foundation grant BCS 08-27084, DHB Collaborative Research: Dynamics of Initial Trust and Cooperation: The Role of Embodied Emotion Cues.] (Date of Image: June 2010)

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Credit: Mary Knox Merrill, Northeastern University


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