An increasing number of robots are being employed in close vicinity to people that have not been trained to use them. We assume that, in order to fit well into these daily life environments, the robots will have to be social and to follow rules that also apply to people. For example, the robots will have to be polite to not offend people.

In this talk, I will introduce some of the projects that we work on that require robots with social skills. These projects include robots guiding people around at airports or at museums, robots used to take care of the elderly and children, and telepresence robots for various applications. I will explain what social skills robots might need to have and how we conduct our research that aims to determine how users experience the robots in their daily life.