Sociable trash box

The STB is capable of engaging manifold affiliation behaviors to build a social rapport toward the goal of collecting trash around an environment. In particular, STB is a child-dependent robot that walks alone in a public space for the purpose of tracing humans and trash and to collect the trash. In a crowded space, STBs move toward the trash by engaging with an attractive twisting motion (behaviors) and vocal interaction to convey STB's intention to children. Our STB robot is incapable of collecting the trash by itself. In this sense, children have to infer a robot's intentional stance or expectation for interaction with the STB. To collect trash while creating social rapport with children is a novel concept. The STB engages with twisting and bowing motions when children put trash into an STB container.