Living with Harmony

„Living with Harmony“ by Kino Coursey, Susan Pirzchalski, Matt McMullen, Guile Lindroth, and Yuri Furuushi is a book chapter of „AI Love You“ by Yuefang Zhou and Martin H. Fischer. From the abstract: „Existing personal assistants and agents are by design limited in their ability to form or encourage close personal bonds. The Harmony system is designed to be a customizable personal companion agent capable of close personal interaction via the user’s phone, virtual reality headset, as well as through a physical interactive android body. In this chapter, we will describe the history that led to Harmony’s creation, the unique challenges and the overall system design. We will also look at user reactions to the system and anticipated future developments.“ (Abstract) Other authors in the book are Jessica M. Szczuka, Melinda A. Mende, John Danaher, Giuseppe Lugano, Yuefang Zhou, Martin H. Fischer, and Oliver Bendel. Some of them met at the international workshop „Learning from Humanoid AI: Motivational, Social & Cognitive Perspectives“ at the University of Potsdam on 30 November and 1 December 2019.

Fig.: Harmony in Potsdam