Human-robot social interaction

Abstract

Human-robot interaction (HRI) is one of the principal functions needed for a smooth and profitable co-habitation (symbiosis) of humans and robots. The robots have to operate with the close presence of humans in environments that that are usually well matched to human motion and action capabilities. For a robot to be able to work efficiently in such real-world environments, both mechanical motion abilities and skills, and good interfaces that assure proper human-robot social interaction are needed. This chapter presents some general HRI classification schemes based on several criteria, and the principal sociorobot categories according to morphology, sociality, the level of relationship, etc. Then, the chapter discusses some unimodal and multimodal human-robot interfaces (vision-based, audio-based, sensor-based), and outlines the typical hardware/software design and evaluation issues of human-robot interfaces.