Human–robot interaction
is the study of interactions between humans and robots. It is often
referred as HRI by researchers. Human–robot interaction is a
multidisciplinary field with contributions from human–computer interaction, artificial intelligence, robotics, natural language understanding, design, and social sciences.
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.
The origin of HRI as a discrete problem was stated by 20th-century author Isaac Asimov in 1941, in his novel I, Robot. He states the Three Laws of Robotics as,
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These three laws of robotics determine the idea of safe interaction.
The closer the human and the robot get and the more intricate the
relationship becomes, the more the risk of a human being injured rises.
Nowadays in advanced societies, manufacturers employing robots solve
this issue by not letting humans and robots share the workspace at any
time. This is achieved by defining safe zones using lidar sensors or
physical cages. Thus the presence of humans is completely forbidden in
the robot workspace while it is working.
With the advances of artificial intelligence, the autonomous
robots could eventually have more proactive behaviors, planning their
motion in complex unknown environments. These new capabilities keep
safety as the primary issue and efficiency as secondary. To allow this
new generation of robot, research is being conducted on human detection,
motion planning, scene reconstruction, intelligent behavior through
task planning and compliant behavior using force control (impedance or
admittance control schemes).
The goal of HRI research is to define models of humans'
expectations regarding robot interaction to guide robot design and
algorithmic development that would allow more natural and effective
interaction between humans and robots. Research ranges from how humans 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.
The goal of friendly human–robot interactions
Kismet can produce a range of facial expressions.
Robots are artificial agents
with capacities of perception and action in the physical world often
referred by researchers as workspace. Their use has been generalized in
factories but nowadays they tend to be found in the most technologically
advanced societies in such critical domains as search and rescue,
military battle, mine and bomb detection, scientific exploration, law
enforcement, entertainment and hospital care.
These new domains of applications imply a closer interaction with
the user. The concept of closeness is to be taken in its full meaning,
robots and humans share the workspace but also share goals in terms of
task achievement. This close interaction needs new theoretical models,
on one hand for the robotics scientists who work to improve the robots
utility and on the other hand to evaluate the risks and benefits of this
new "friend" for our modern society.
With the advance in AI,
the research is focusing on one part towards the safest physical
interaction but also on a socially correct interaction, dependent on
cultural criteria. The goal is to build an intuitive, and easy
communication with the robot through speech, gestures, and facial
expressions.
Dautenhahn refers to friendly Human–robot interaction as
"Robotiquette" defining it as the "social rules for robot behavior (a
‘robotiquette’) that is comfortable and acceptable to humans"
The robot has to adapt itself to our way of expressing desires and
orders and not the contrary. But every day environments such as homes
have much more complex social rules than those implied by factories or
even military environments. Thus, the robot needs perceiving and
understanding capacities to build dynamic models of its surroundings. It
needs to categorize objects,
recognize and locate humans and further their emotions. The need for
dynamic capacities pushes forward every sub-field of robotics.
Furthermore, by understanding and perceiving social cues, robots
can enable collaborative scenarios with humans. For example, with the
rapid rise of personal fabrication machines such as desktop 3d printers, laser cutters,
etc., entering our homes, scenarios may arise where robots can
collaboratively share control, co-ordinate and achieve tasks together. Industrial robots
have already been integrated into industrial assembly lines and are
collaboratively working with humans. The social impact of such robots
have been studied and has indicated that workers still treat robots and social entities, rely on social cues to understand and work together.
On the other end of HRI research the cognitive modelling of the
"relationship" between human and the robots benefits the psychologists
and robotic researchers the user study are often of interests on both
sides. This research endeavours part of human society. For effective human – humanoid robot interaction numerous communication skills and related features should be implemented in the design of such artificial agents/systems.
General HRI research
HRI research spans a wide range of field, some general to the nature of HRI.
Methods for perceiving humans
Most methods intend to build a 3D model through vision
of the environment. The proprioception sensors permit the robot to have
information over its own state. This information is relative to a
reference.
Methods for perceiving humans in the environment are based on
sensor information. Research on sensing components and software led by
Microsoft provide useful results for extracting the human kinematics .
An example of older technique is to use color information for example
the fact that for light skinned people the hands are lighter than the
clothes worn. In any case a human modeled a priori can then be fitted
to the sensor data. The robot builds or has (depending on the level of
autonomy the robot has) a 3D mapping of its surroundings to which is
assigned the humans locations.
A speech recognition system is used to interpret human desires or
commands. By combining the information inferred by proprioception,
sensor and speech the human position and state (standing, seated).
Methods for motion planning
Motion planning in dynamic environment is a challenge that is for the moment only achieved for 3 to 10 degrees of freedom
robots. Humanoid robots or even 2 armed robots that can have up to 40
degrees of freedom are unsuited for dynamic environments with today's
technology. However lower-dimensional robots can use potential field
method to compute trajectories avoiding collisions with human.
Cognitive models and theory of mind
Humans
exhibit negative social and emotional responses as well as decreased
trust toward some robots that closely, but imperfectly, resemble humans;
this phenomenon has been termed the "Uncanny Valley."
However recent research in telepresence robots has established that
mimicking human body postures and expressive gestures has made the
robots likeable and engaging in a remote setting.
Further, the presence of a human operator was felt more strongly when
tested with an android or humanoid telepresence robot than with normal
video communication through a monitor.
While there is a growing body of research about users perceptions
and emotions towards robots, we are still far from a complete
understanding. Only additional experiments will determine a more
precise model.
Based on past research we have some indications about current user sentiment and behavior around robots:
- During initial interactions, people are more uncertain, anticipate less social presence, and have fewer positive feelings when thinking about interacting with robots. This finding has been called the human-to-human interaction script.
- It has been observed that when the robot performs a proactive behavior and does not respect a "safety distance" (by penetrating the user space) the user sometimes expresses fear. This fear response is person-dependent.
- It has also been shown that when a robot has no particular use, negative feelings are often expressed. The robot is perceived as useless and its presence becomes annoying.
- People have also been shown to attribute personality characteristics to the robot that were not implemented in software.
Methods for human-robot coordination
A
large body of work in the field of human-robot interaction has looked
at how humans and robots may better collaborate. The primary social cue
for humans while collaborating is the shared perception of an activity,
to this end researchers have investigated anticipatory robot control
through various methods including: monitoring the behaviors of human
partners using eye tracking, making inferences about human task intent, and proactive action on the part of the robot. The studies revealed that the anticipatory control helped users perform tasks faster than with reactive control alone.
A common approach to program social cues into robots is to first
study human-human behaviors and then transfer the learning. For example,
coordination mechanisms in human-robot collaboration are based on work in neuroscience
which examined how to enable joint action in human-human configuration
by studying perception and action in a social context rather than in
isolation. These studies have revealed that maintaining a shared
representation of the task is crucial for accomplishing tasks in groups.
For example, the authors have examined the task of driving together by
separating responsibilities of acceleration and braking i.e., one person
is responsible for accelerating and the other for braking; the study
revealed that pairs reached the same level of performance as individuals
only when they received feedback about the timing of each other's
actions. Similarly, researchers have studied the aspect of human-human
handovers with household scenarios like passing dining plates in order
to enable an adaptive control of the same in human-robot handovers.
Most recently, researchers have studied a system that automatically
distributes assembly tasks among co-located workers to improve
co-ordination.
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.
HRI/OS research
The
Human-Robot Interaction Operating System(HRI/OS), "provides a
structured software framework for building human-robot teams, supports a
variety of user interfaces, enables humans and robots to engage in
task-oriented dialogue, and facilitates integration of robots through an
extensible API".
Search and rescue
First
responders face great risks in search and rescue (SAR) settings, which
typically involve environments that are unsafe for a human to travel. In addition, technology offers tools for observation that can greatly speed-up and improve the accuracy of human perception. Robots can be used to address these concerns
. Research in this area includes efforts to address robot sensing,
mobility, navigation, planning, integration, and tele-operated control
.
SAR robots have already been deployed to environments such as the Collapse of the World Trade Center.
Other application areas include:
- Entertainment
- Education
- Field robotics
- Home and companion robotics
- Hospitality
- Rehabilitation and Elder Care
- Robot Assisted Therapy (RAT)
- Anthropomorphism and the uncanny valley
Properties
Bartneck and Okada 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?
Conferences
International Conference on Social Robotics
The
International Conference on Social Robotics is a conference for
scientists, researchers, and practitioners to report and discuss the
latest progress of their forefront research and findings in social
robotics, as well as interactions with human beings and integration into
our society.
- ICSR2009, Incheon, Korea in collaboration with the FIRA RoboWorld Congress
- ICSR2010, Singapore
- ICSR2011, Amsterdam, Netherlands
International Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationships
- HRPR2008, Maastricht
- HRPR 2009, Tilburg. Keynote speaker was Hiroshi Ishiguro.
- HRPR2010, Leiden. Keynote speaker was Kerstin Dautenhahn.
International Symposium on New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction
This
symposium is organized in collaboration with the Annual Convention of
the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of
Behaviour.
- 2015, Canterbury, United Kingdom
- 2014, London, United Kingdom
- 2010, Leicester, United Kingdom
- 2009, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
IEEE International Symposium in Robot and Human Interactive Communication
The
IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive
Communication ( RO-MAN ) was founded in 1992 by Profs. Toshio Fukuda,
Hisato Kobayashi, Hiroshi Harashima and Fumio Hara. Early workshop
participants were mostly Japanese, and the first seven workshops were
held in Japan. Since 1999, workshops have been held in Europe and the
United States as well as Japan, and participation has been of
international scope.
ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
This
conference is amongst the best conferences in the field of HRI and has a
very selective reviewing process. The average acceptance rate is 26%
and the average attendance is 187. Around 65% of the contributions to
the conference come from the US and the high level of quality of the
submissions to the conference becomes visible by the average of 10
citations that the HRI papers attracted so far.
- HRI 2006 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, Acceptance Rate: 0.29
- HRI 2007 in Washington, D.C., USA, Acceptance Rate: 0.23
- HRI 2008 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Acceptance Rate: 0.36 (0.18 for oral presentations)
- HRI 2009 in San Diego, CA, USA, Acceptance Rate: 0.19
- HRI 2010 in Osaka, Japan, Acceptance Rate: 0.21
- HRI 2011 in Lausanne, Switzerland, Acceptance Rate: 0.22 for full papers
- HRI 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Acceptance Rate: 0.25 for full papers
- HRI 2013 in Tokyo, Japan, Acceptance Rate: 0.24 for full papers
- HRI 2014 in Bielefeld, Germany, Acceptance Rate: 0.24 for full papers
- HRI 2015 in Portland, Oregon, USA, Acceptance Rate: 0.25 for full papers
- HRI 2016 in Christchurch, New Zealand, Acceptance Rate: 0.25 for full papers
- HRI 2017 in Vienna, Austria, Acceptance Rate: 0.24 for full papers
- HRI 2018 in Chicago, USA, Acceptance Rate: 0.24 for full papers
International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction
- HAI 2013 in Sapporo, Japan
- HAI 2014 in Tsukuba, Japan
- HAI 2015 in Daegu, Korea
- HAI 2016 in Singapore
- HAI 2017 in Bielefeld, Germany
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
Related journals
There are currently two dedicated HRI Journals
- International Journal of Social Robotics
- The open access Journal of Human-Robot Interaction
and there are several more general journals in which one will find HRI articles.
- International Journal of Humanoid Robotics
- Entertainment Robotics Section of the Entertainment Computing Journal
- Interaction Studies Journal
- Artificial Intelligence
- Systems, Man and Cybernetics
