A social robot is a type of service robot built to interact with humans in social contexts such as education, health care, entertainment, and hospitality. Like other robots, a social robot is physically embodied (avatars or on-screen synthetic social characters are not embodied and thus distinct). Some synthetic social agents are designed with a screen to represent the head or 'face' to dynamically communicate with users. In these cases, the status as a social robot depends on the form of the 'body' of the social agent; if the body has and uses some physical motors and sensor abilities, then the system could be considered a robot.
Background
While robots have often been described as possessing social qualities (see for example the tortoises developed by William Grey Walter in the 1950s), social robotics is a fairly recent branch of robotics. Since the 1990s, artificial intelligence and robotics researchers have developed robots which explicitly engage on a social level.
The evolution of social robots began with autonomous robots designed to have little to no interaction with humans. Essentially, they were designed to take on what humans could not. Technologically advanced robots were sent out to handle hazardous conditions and the assignments that could potentially put humans in danger, like exploring the deep oceans or the surface of Mars.Weir, K. (2018, January 1). The dawn of social robots. Monitor on Psychology, 49(1). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/01/cover-social-robots Advancing these original intentions, robots are continually being developed to be inserted into human-related settings to establish their social aspect and access their influence on human interactions. Over time, social robots have been advanced to begin to have their own role in society.
Designing an autonomous social robot is particularly challenging, as the robot needs to correctly interpret people's action and respond appropriately, which is currently not yet possible. Moreover, people interacting with a social robot may hold very high expectancies of its capabilities, based on science fiction representations of advanced social robots. As such, many social robots are partially or fully remote controlled to simulate advanced capabilities. This method of (often covertly) controlling a social robot is referred to as a Mechanical Turk or Wizard of Oz, after the character in the L. Frank Baum book. Wizard of Oz studies are useful in social robotics research to evaluate how people respond to social robots.
Definition A robot is defined in the International Standard of Organization as a reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools or specialized devices through variable programmed motions for performance of a variety of tasks. As a subset of robots, social robots perform any or all of these processes in the context of a social interaction. It interacts socially with humans or evokes social responses from them. The nature of the social interactions is immaterial and may range from relatively simple supportive tasks, such as passing tools to a worker, to complex expressive communication and collaboration, such as assistive healthcare. Hence, social robots are asked to work together with humans in collaborative workspaces. Moreover, social robots start following humans into much more personal settings like home, health care, and education.
Social interactions are likely to be cooperative, but the definition is not limited to this situation. Moreover, uncooperative behavior can be considered social in certain situations. The robot could, for example, exhibit competitive behavior within the framework of a game. The robot could also interact with a minimum or no communication. It could, for example, hand tools to an astronaut working on a space station. However, it is likely that some communication will be necessary at some point.
Two suggested David Feil-Seifer, Kristine Skinner and Maja J. Matarić, "Benchmarks for evaluating socially assistive robotics", Interaction Studies: Psychological Benchmarks of Human-Robot Inteaction [sic], 8(3), 423-429 Oct, 2007 ultimate requirements for social robots are the Turing Test to determine the robot's communication skills and Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics for its behavior. The usefulness to apply these requirements in a real-world application, especially in the case of Asimov's laws, is still disputed (and may not be possible at all). However, a consequence of this viewpoint is that a robot that only interacts and communicates with other robots would not be considered to be a social robot: Being social is bound to humans and their society which defines necessary social values, norms and standards.Taipale, S., Vincent, J., Sapio, B., Lugano, G. and Fortunati, L. (2015) Introduction: Situating the Human in Social Robots. In J. Vincent et al., eds. Social Robots from a Human Perspective, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 1-17 This results in a cultural dependency of social robots since social values, norms and standards differ between cultures.
This brings us directly to the last part of the definition. A social robot must interact within the social rules attached to its role. The role and its rules are defined through society. For example, a robotic butler for humans would have to comply with established rules of good service. It should be anticipating, reliable and most of all discreet. A social robot must be aware of this and comply with it. However, social robots that interact with other autonomous robots would also behave and interact according to non-human conventions. In most social robots the complexity of human-to-human interaction will be gradually approached with the advancement of the technology of androids (a form of humanoid robots) and implementation of a variety of more human-like communication skills
Social interaction Researches have investigated user engagement with a robot companion. Literature present different models regarding this concern. An example is a framework that models both causes and effects of engagement: features related to the user's non-verbal behaviour, the task and the companion's affective reactions to predict children's level of engagement.
Many people are uneasy about interacting socially with a robot and, in general, people tend to prefer smaller robots to large humanoid robots. They also prefer robots to do tasks like cleaning the house rather than providing companionship. In verbal social interactions people tend to share less information with robots than with humans. Despite initial reluctance to interact with social robots, exposure to a social robot may decrease uncertainty and increase willingness to interact with the robot, and research shows that over time people speak for a longer time and share more information in their disclosures to a social robot. If people have an interaction with a social robot that is seen as playful (as opposed to focused on completing a task or being social) they may be more likely to engage with the robot in the future.
Symbolic behaviour and social perception As AI agents and robotic systems perform actions—such as gestures, facial expressions, or formalized outputs—that observers interpret as symbolically meaningful. These behaviours, while typically generated through programmed instructions or statistical models, can resemble human social conventions and are often perceived as conveying intent or emotion. Studies in human–robot interaction (HRI) suggest that anthropomorphic design features and symbolic cues can influence users' interpretations, potentially increasing engagement, perceived trust, and emotional responsiveness during interaction. Research in social cognition indicates that people attribute meaning or emotional states to artificial agents, particularly in contexts where nonverbal cues, such as eye contact or nodding, are present.
Contextual framing and situated social experience Recent research in human-robot interaction has proposed nonessentialist perspectives on how robots come to be perceived as social actors. According to Kaptelinin and Dalli (2025), the "sociality" of robots does not arise from inherent design features or fixed human tendencies, but from how people experience robots as part of meaningful collaborative contexts as a whole. They term this process contextual framing. This approach emphasizes that the perception of robots as social partners is augmented and depends on factors such as shared goals, collaboration, space/environment, and personal significance rather than on designed appearance and behaviours alone. While Kaptelinin and Dalli (2025) reject essentialist views that attribute perceptions of sociality solely to robot design, they acknowledge that design choices (such as anthropomorphic form, communicative abilities, behavioral cues etc.) can influence how interaction contexts develop and are a part of a greater whole that shapes the social meaning of an encounter. Alongside things like designed aesthetics, designed behaviors and programmed/pre-planned actions, dimensions such as contextual importance, contextual agency, collaboration, and personal impact of the robot (in relation to the human) must be considered to gain a fuller understanding of the entire contextual framing of a humans social experience with a robot. Design features, and whether or not a robot is perceived as social, is mediated by the context in which the interaction arises (though, design features themselves can contribute, in part, to that context).
Societal impacts The increasingly widespread use of more advanced social robots is one of several phenomena expected to contribute to the technological posthumanization of human societies, through which process "a society comes to include members other than 'natural' biological human beings who, in one way or another, contribute to the structures, dynamics, or meaning of the society."
Uses in healthcare