Cultural Competence Through Dynamic Epistemic Logic: a Proposal for Robotic Implementation

Culture influences knowledge and permissions dynamically. To formalise a social robot's cultural competence, we propose considering modal logic to interpret Possible Worlds, which can be considered as more or less probable alternative situations that change according to new information. The robot, moreover, may simulate empathy and meta-cognition, implementing justified action plans that conform to the users’ common ground, and its awareness. Being cultural meanings acted on and built by communities (that give consensus over time), we propose here a software framework for culture-aware social robots able to deal with cultural inferences and the Theory of Mind.