Social RoboticsMade by Charlie Caper
social-robotics.com is a field guide to social robotics and a daily record of what is happening in it, made by a creative technologist who has spent years making machines feel alive.
Between art and technology
Charlie Caper is a creative technologist who works where art meets technology. Some days that means building heavy, serious systems for businesses: integrations, platforms and AI that have to work every time. Other days it means building something light, strange and beautiful whose only job is to make people stop and wonder. Charlie moves between the two on purpose, because each makes the other better.
Charlie is also a magician. After creating a magic act built around iPads that toured internationally, he began experimenting with robots and mechanical effects on stage, which became Robotricks, a show full of robots. For a magician, the history of automata is family history: the great automaton builders of the past were often conjurors, and the question at the heart of both crafts is the same. What makes people believe something is alive? That is why this site has a whole dossier on automata and magic.
Furhat Robotics
After years of putting robots on stage, Charlie joined Furhat Robotics, the Stockholm company behind the Furhat social robot. Starting as an Interactions Developer, he became the company's Chief Creative Officer, working at the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence, psychology and expression, and doing much of the work of integrating the robot with early large language models.
Charlie has worked with OpenAI's models since GPT-2, well before ChatGPT, and has spoken about AI and robotics at events including Web Summit and SIME.
More at charliecaper.com.
§ 02 / The siteWhat you will find here
- The guide: in-depth pages on what social robotics is, how social robots work, where they are used, notable robots, the science, ethics and a glossary.
- Automata and magic: the machines that pretended to be alive, and the magicians who built them.
- A history of artificial intelligence: the long story social robotics belongs to.
- The daily roundup: a short post summarising the day's social robotics stories and papers, with links to the originals.
- News and research: a continuously updated feed of social robotics stories and new papers.
Contact
Suggestions for stories, corrections or robots that deserve a place in the guide are welcome via charliecaper.com.