IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021 - 143

[8]) was already practiced to improve citizens' abilities to verbally
express a reasoning or felt emotions, argue for or
against a thesis, and many other intentions that would allow
one to raise one's own voice in the public domain. In the context
of the CSI's experiment, the practice of the exercise invited
the participants to reflect on their own relationship with
natural language.
Along the same lines, but about a related problematic
of research, we organized the workshop " Rhetoric and
Robotics " at the ICRA Conference of 2019 (http://rhetoricra
2019.ulb.be/). Hence, based on the ancient technique of
rhetoric, we invited roboticists to experiment with the
practice known as ekphrasis, in other words, to produce a
vivid description about the robot Cheetah from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. For this purpose, we
asked participants to write a letter to a fictional blind
friend; this condition forced the participants to describe
the robot in detail and focus on sharing their reactions
and emotions toward its movement. This exercise is
known for creating mental images and revealing a subjective
and specific perception of the object described. We
aim to collect the subjective experience of roboticists
toward robots (and, more precisely, toward robots' movements).
This problematic is related to the matter of the
intentional stance (adopted mostly by nonexperts) and
the design (or technical) stance adopted by specialists
toward robots [9].
" A Major Discovery in Robotics "
All the roboticists and journalists participating in the experiment
were first welcomed with a short presentation on the
discipline of rhetoric. Then, participants were informed that
they were going to carry out an exercise based on a particular
story line (see Figure 2).
Following the presentation of the story line, four groups
were created as well as a jury (mixing roboticists and journalists
in each case). Each group was given the task of defending
one candidate in front of the jury. The groups could not
choose the candidate to defend. The jury, namely, the directors
of the fictional robotics laboratory
where a major breakthrough had been
made, were tasked with ranking the
candidates according to criteria that
the members themselves had defined.
The chosen candidate would then have
the exclusive right to present the highly
important (but imagined) scientific
results to the society. The groups of
defenders had 30 min to prepare
before they were invited to present a
3-min speech in favor of their candidate.
The jury was then allowed to ask
up to two questions of each group.
Each candidate (François, Juliette,
Patrick, and Marise) was assigned to
one group of defenders. To prepare
their candidate's defense, each group had access to a
brief résumé of all four candidates as well as a (supposedly)
previously printed publication about a similar event-the
arrival of the new robot, " Pyrène, " at the Laboratory for
Architecture and Analysis
of Systems, a unit of
the French National
Center for Research
(LAAS-CNRS), Toulouse,
in 2017 (see " The
Four Candidates of the
Case of 'A Major Discovery
in Robotics' " ).
The candidates' profiles
and articles were purely
fictional and created
according to four major
positions that are commonly
taken up to
address the element of
myth in robotics [10].
Indeed, the task of making robotics understandable to othRhetoric
is not just a matter
of communication but
rather a technique that
can enlighten the way that
roboticists perceive their
own discipline.
ers (and, in this instance, others who are not specialists in the
given field of expertise) inevitably entails dealing with the element
of myth; in other words, the idea of a humanity being
able to recreate itself via technology. This idea finds its roots
notably in ancient Greece with Hephaestus [11]. Yet there are
various ways to address the element of myth in discourses
about robotics.
1) At one extreme of the spectrum, one stance is to
fully exploit the myth, and every opportunity is then
taken to maintain the ambiguity between humans
and machines.
2) At the other extreme, the stance is to ignore the element of
myth; in this case, the speakers give very pragmatic definitions
of robotics and tend to describe the discipline
through a set of procedures.
3) Also, many speeches or texts reveal an ambivalent strategy
as they sometimes appeal to the dream of the intelligent
Figure 2. The story line of the rhetorical exercise was meant to provide a context to the
task given to the participants. It has been translated from French to English for this article.
SEPTEMBER 2021 * IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE *
143

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