The objectives of InStance are to understand the multiple factors that contribute towards adopting the intentional stance towards humanoid robots and its relationship with social attunement. We are specifically focusing on subtle characteristics of the robot behavior, such as mutual gaze, the contingency of gaze behavior, or social intentions carried in communicative gestures. Besides, we are interested in how cultural embedding or experience with artificial agents impacts adopting the intentional stance.
We employ cognitive neuroscience methods and well-controlled experiments in interactive protocols with a humanoid robot iCub to measure how the human brain responds to the robot’s behavior. 