Robotics for safety and security

Abstract

Certain societal issues, such as the rapidly growing aged society and the increase in crimes, imply that service robots are required to operate in a safe manner. It is important to discuss the two aspects of the safety of robots: physical safety and mental safety. A kind of physical safety is discussed by showing an example of technology: a humanoid robot capable of carrying a wheelchair user. As for mental safety aspect, a new psychological scale is developed to quantify general impressions toward humanoids, using 11 different humanoid robots and 3543 Japanese respondents. It is revealed that nine factors are used for evaluating the general impressions of robots: familiarity, repulsion, performance, utility, motion, sound, voice, humanness, and agency.