Eight ultimate challenges of human-robot communication

Abstract

I contemplate what I believe to be eight of the most challenging long-term problems in human-robot communication. I interpret this phrase in a broad sense, including communication among the designers of robot systems with respect to the high-level design, programming and use of robots for humane purposes. Since the earliest robots of the 1940s human communication with them has been a serious consideration, and progress over the ensuing 50 years has been great. Control of prosthetic arms has changed from crude cables to myoelectric signals and speech. Control of telemanipulators for hazardous environments such as nuclear plants, space and undersea has changes from simple on-off control of individual joints to high-level supervisory languages of various kinds, combining both analog and symbolic communication. The same is true for industrial robots, which can now make movements very much faster and more precisely than can humans. It is not my intent to review that progress, though it is clear that as robots themselves become more intelligent the nature of communication between the human operator and the robot is becoming less and less like that of using a passive hand tool and more and more like the relationship between two human beings.