Social robots and social work

The goal of this article is to seek a path of cooperation between engineers and sociologists in view of the construction of increasingly sophisticated social robots. First, I show how humanoid and animaloidcompanion robots are used in the field of applied sociology and social work. Secondly, I explore several problems relating to social robotics, and in particular those of effectiveness and safety of human-robot interaction. Finally, I emphasize that two key concepts in this research area are scenario and persona. Trained sociologists and psychologists may give a substantive contribution to the development of social robotics by helping engineers in the creation of scenarios and personas