A social robot is an autonomous robot that interact with people by engaging in social emotive behaviors, skills, capacities, and rules attached to its collaborative role. In order to achieve these goals we believe that modeling the interaction with the user and adapt the robot behavior to the user herself are fundamental for its social role. This paper presents our first attempt to integrate user modeling features in social and affective robots. We propose a cloud-based architecture for modeling the user-robot interaction in order to reuse the approach with different kind of social robots.

Sanbot is lurking around IFA again. The little robot helper won us over last year, but something seems different this time round. And, this one wants to hang out with you -- yes, you. You see Qihan, the China-based company behind the new child-like machine, has a range of robots for various tasks. There's Sanbot King Kong, which is designed to man reception desks at hotels, and deliver food for restaurants, among other business-oriented jobs.

Need a teacher, airport guide, care taker, and customs control officer all in one? Standing at just under 3 feet tall with big cartoon eyes and flipper arms, Sanbot looks more helpless than helpful, but don't let that cute appearance fool you. Sanbot is packed with features to help "her" get the job done. Sanbot has 14 of them scattered throughout its three foot frame. Many of these are touch sensitive, allowing the robotic lady to respond with human-like emotion to a particular tap.

Need a teacher, airport guide, care taker, and customs control officer all in one? Standing at just under 3 feet tall with big cartoon eyes and flipper arms, Sanbot looks more helpless than helpful, but don't let that cute appearance fool you. Sanbot is packed with features to help "her" get the job done. Sanbot has 14 of them scattered throughout its three foot frame. Many of these are touch sensitive, allowing the robotic lady to respond with human-like emotion to a particular tap.

Passengers making their way through airport customs could soon be greeted by a fleet of pint-sized robots. Looking more robo-penguin than Robocop, the Chinese-built Sanbot is being trialled in a number of industries, but will be used at airports to process travellers. Designed and built by Shenzhen-based Qihan, Sanbot is designed to interact with people in a range of environments. It can answer programmed questions in 28 languages, and transfer people to a human operator. In place of arms, the robot has a pair of flippers and moves around on a set of wheels. Sanbot uses a Microsoft Kinect-style tracking system and HD camera.

When I arrived at Qihan's IFA booth, a rainbow-colored trio of Sanbots were performing choreographed moves to some unrecognizable pop song. Because, well, when you want to get people to stop at your both in the middle of a giant show full of gadgety distractions, you pull out all the stops. The plucky little robot has flipper arms, a pair of wheels for feet and a body chock full of various sensors to help it perform a factotum of different jobs, from security guard to nursing home companion to educational assistant. According to the company, this iteration of Sanbot has already been deployed at various spots in China from retail establishments to airports. Sanbot's got a Kinect-style 3D camera and HD camera about its LED eyes, a touchscreen tablet in its chest and infrared sensors at its feet.