Are Robots That Assess Their Partner's Attachment Style Better At Autonomous Adaptive Behaviour?

Interacting with partners that understand our desire of closeness or space and adapt their behavior accordingly is an important factor in social interaction, since the perception of others is a fundamental prerequisite for reliable interaction. In human-human interaction (HHI), this information can be inferred by a person's attachment style - a person's characteristic way of forming relationships, modulating behavior (i.e ways to give or seek support) and, on a biological level, their hormone dynamics. Enabling robots to understand their partners' attachment style could enhance robot's perception of partners and help them on how adapt behaviors during an interaction. In this direction, we wish to use the relationship between attachment style and cortisol, to equip the humanoid robot iCub with an internal cortisol-inspired framework that allows it to infer the participant's attachment style and drives it to adapt its behavior accordingly.