Human-robot interaction

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Human-robot interaction (HRI) is the study of interactions between people (users) and robots. HRI is multidisciplinary with contributions from the fields of human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, robotics, natural language understanding, and social science (psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, and human factors).

Robots are, or soon will be, used in such critical domains as search and rescue, military battle, mine and bomb detection, scientific exploration, law enforcement, entertainment, and hospital care. Such robots must coordinate their behaviors with the requirements and expectations of human team members; they are more than mere tools but rather quasi-team members whose tasks have to be integrated with those of humans.

The basic goal of HRI is to develop principles and algorithms to allow more natural and effective communication and interaction between humans and robots. Research ranges from how humans will work with remote, tele-operated unmanned vehicles to peer-to-peer collaboration with anthropomorphic robots. Many in the field of HRI study how humans collaborate and interact and use those studies to motivate how robots should interact with humans.

Contents

[edit] Origins

Human-robot interaction has been a topic of both science fiction and academic speculation even before any robots existed. Because HRI depends on a knowledge of (sometimes natural) human communication, many aspects of HRI are continuations of human communications topics that are much older than robotics per se.

[edit] General HRI Research

HRI research spans a wide range of field, some general to the nature of HRI. This research endeavors to answer questions regarding the nature of robotics, how robots interact with people, and how robots could exist as part of human society.

General areas for HRI research include:

[edit] Application-Oriented HRI Research

In addition to general HRI research, researchers are currently exploring application areas for human-robot interaction systems. Application-oriented research is used to help bring current robotics technologies to bear against problems that exist in today's society. While human-robot interaction is still a rather young area of interest, there is active development and research in many areas.

[edit] Search and Rescue

First responders face take great risks in search and rescue (SAR) settings, which typically involve environments that are unsafe for a human to travel[citation needed]. In addition, technology offers tools for observation that can greatly speed-up and improve the accuracy of human perception[citation needed]. Robots can be used to address these concerns[citation needed] . Research in this area includes efforts to address robot sensing, mobility, navigation, planning, integration, and tele-operated control[citation needed].

SAR robots have already been deployed to environments such as the Collapse of the World Trade Center[1].

Other application areas include:

  • Entertainment
  • Education
  • Field robotics
  • Home and companion robotics
  • Hospitality
  • Rehabilitation and Elder Care

[edit] Related Technology Fields

[edit] Properties

Bartneck and Okada [2] suggest that a robotic user interface can be described by the following four properties:

Tool - toy scale
  • Is the system designed to solve a problem effectively or is it just for entertainment?
Remote control - autonomous scale
  • Does the robot require remote control or is it capable of action without direct human influence?
Reactive - dialogue scale
  • Does the robot rely on a fixed interaction pattern or is it able to have dialogue — exchange of information — with a human?
Anthropomorphism scale
  • Does it have the shape or properties of a human?

[edit] Conferences

  • The IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication was founded in 1992 by Profs. Toshio Fukuda, Hisato Kobayashi, Hiroshi Harashima and Fumio Hara. Early workshop participants were mosly Japanese, and the first eight workshops were held in Japan. Since 2000, workshops have been held in Europe and the United States as well as Japan, and participation has been of international scope.
  • The first ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2006) was held in March of 2006.
  • The second ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2007) was held in March 2007.
  • The third ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2007) was held in March 2008.
  • The first International Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationships (HRPR 2008) will be held in June 2008.

[edit] Related conferences

There are many conferences that are not exclusively HRI, but deal with broad aspects of HRI, and often have HRI papers presented.

  • IEEE-RAS/RSJ International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)
  • Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp)
  • IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
  • Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI)
  • Computer Human Interaction (CHI)
  • American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
  • Interact

[edit] Related journals

There is no HRI Journal per se, but there are several more general journals in which one will find HRI articles.

  • International Journal of Humanoid Robotics
  • Interaction Studies Journal
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Systems, Man and Cybernetics

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Casper, J. & Murphy, R. (June 2003), “Human-robot interactions during the robot-assisted urban search and rescue response at the World Trade Center”, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics 33 (3): 367- 385, <http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/3477/27019/01200160.pdf?tp=&isnumber=&arnumber=1200160> 
  2. ^ Bartneck, Christoph; Michio Okada (2001). "Robotic User Interfaces". Proceedings of the Human and Computer Conference: 130-140. 

[edit] External links