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Chapter 1SOCIALLY INTELLIGENT AGENTSCreating Relationships with Computers and RobotsKerstin Dautenhahn 1 , Alan Bond 2 , Lola Cañamero 1 , and Bruce Edmonds 31 University of Hertfordshire,2 California Institute of Technology,3 Manchester MetropolitanUniversityAbstractThis introduction explains the motivation to edit this book and provides an overviewof the chapters included in this book. Main themes and common threadsthat can be found across different chapters are identified that might help thereader in navigating the book.1. Background: Why this book?The field of Socially Intelligent Agents (SIA) is by many perceived as agrowing and increasingly important research area that comprises very activeresearch activities and strongly interdisciplinary approaches. The field of SociallyIntelligent Agents is characterized by agent systems that show humanstylesocial intelligence [5]. Humans live in individualized societies wheregroup members know each other, so do other animal species, cf. figure 1.1.Although overlap exists, SIA systems are different from multi-agent systemsthat a) are often only loosely related to human social intelligence, or use verydifferent models from the animal world, e.g. self-organization in social insectsocieties, or b) might strongly focus on the engineering and optimizationaspects of the agent approach to software engineering.In the past, two AAAI Fall Symposia were organized on the topic of SociallyIntelligent Agents, in 1997 and 2000. Both symposia attracted a largenumber of participants. The first symposium gave a general overview on thespectrum of research in the field, and in the years following this event a varietyof publications (special journal issues and books) resulted from it 1 .Also,a number of related symposia and workshops were subsequently organized 2 .Unlike the 1997 symposium, the 2000 symposium specifically addressed theissue of Socially Intelligent Agents - The Human in the Loop. A special issue