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Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots 13feedback gained to design artifacts which are more socially competent in thefuture. Sparky is not autonomous but teleoperated, since the current state of theart in mobile and social robotics does not permit to achieve complex and richenough interactions. In addition to facial expression, Sparky makes extensiveuse of its body (e.g., posture, movement, eye tracking, mimicry of people’smotions) to express emotion and to interact with humans. The authors reportand discuss very interesting observations of people interacting with the robot,as well as the feedback provided in interviews with some of the participants inthe experiments and with the operators of Sparky.2.6 Interactive Education and TrainingVirtual training environments can provide (compared with field studies) verycost-efficient training scenarios that can be experimentally manipulated andclosely monitor a human’s learning process. Clearly, interactive virtual trainingenvironments are potentially much more ‘engaging’ in contrast to noninteractivetraining where relevant information is provided passively to theuser, e.g. in video presentations. The range of potential application areas isvast, but most promising are scenarios that would otherwise (in real life) behighly dangerous, cost-intensive, or demanding on equipment.Similarly, Socially Intelligent Agents in children’s (or adult’s) education canprovide enjoyable and even entertaining learning environments, where childrenlearn constructively and cooperatively. Such learning environments cannot replace‘real life’ practical experience, but they can provide the means to creativelyand safely explore information and problem spaces as well as fantasyworlds. Using such environments in education also provides useful computerskills that the children acquire ‘by doing’. Education in such systems can rangefrom learning particular tasks (such as learning interactively about mathematicsor English grammar), encouraging creativity and imagination (e.g. throughthe construction of story environments by children for children), to making acontribution to personal and social education, such as getting to know differentcultures and learning social skills in communication, cooperation and collaborationwith other children that might not be encountered easily in real life (e.g.children in other countries).In chapter 22 Jonathan Gratch describes ‘socially situated planning’ for deliberateplanning agents that inhabit virtual training environments. For trainingsimulators, in order to be believable, not only the physical dynamics, but alsothe social dynamics and the social behavior of the agents must be designedcarefully. For learning effects to occur, such training scenarios need to be ‘realistic’and believable enough to engage the user, i.e. to let the user suspendthe disbelief that this is not ‘just a simulation’ where actions do not matter. Inthe proposed architecture, social reasoning is realized as a meta-level on top