Designing Fluent Human-Robot Collaboration

Abstract

Within the next few years, personal robots are expected to enter our homes, offices, schools, hospitals, construction sites, and workshops. For these robots to play a successful role in people's professional and personal lives, they need to display the kind of efficient and satisfying interaction that humans are accustomed to from each other. Designing this human-robot interaction is a multifaceted challenge, balancing requirements of the robot's appearance and behavior. A robot's appearance evokes interaction affordances and triggers emotional responses; its behavior communicates internal states, and can support action coordination and joint planning. Good HRI design should enlist both facets to enable untrained humans to work fluently and intuitively with the robot.