REVISITING THE END USER’S PERSPECTIVE IN COLLABORATIVE HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION

Abstract

The disciplines of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) have evolved rather independently since their early days, mainly because early computers and early robots shared little common ground. However, as computers have jumped off the desktop to pervade the physical world, and as robots extend themselves from the physical world into the cloud, traditional boundaries between these two technological entities have blurred out due to the increasing complexity of their natural habitats. In this paper, we take a snapshot of these converging evolutions, and enquire about the benefits that the human user in HRI can derive from applying HCI methods for R&D, including viewing the collaborative robot itself as an interface.