Minimizing the Human? Functional Reductions of Complexity in Social Robotics and Their Cybernetic Heritage

Recently designers at the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory (ATR, Kyoto) decided to shift their focus away from highly-lifelike androids to very minimalistic appearances like that of the Telenoid, Elfoid and Hugvie models. Instead of trying to simulate the appearance and behavior of actual human beings, the decision was to sidestep the Uncanny Valley problem by restricting the robots to a functional minimum in human likeness. This chapter investigates different approaches to complexity reduction in social robotics, among them experiments that compared human mime artists (theatrical robots) with actual robots in the interaction with autistic children and the implementation of cartoon techniques to model emotions in the generation of projected facial expressions. The notion of complexity reduction is discussed with respect to its merits (especially from a systems theoretical framework) and to its drawbacks. Beyond ethical considerations, the chapter argues that the research on social robotics is linked with the cybernetic hypothesis (as formulated by Tiqqun), a contemporary mode of governance and regulation that privileges certain kinds of subjectification via communication and discourages others.