Teaching a first course in human-robot interaction

Abstract

This paper will present the details of the design and implementation of an introductory course in human-robot interaction (HRI) for graduate and undergraduate students from various disciplines. Human-Robot Interaction is a multidisciplinary field that focuses on identifying methods for robots to successfully interact with humans. This field of study involves the understanding, design, and evaluation of robotics systems to be used by or with humans [1]. The author will summarize the key elements of a first course in Human-Robot Interaction with a survey of the most relevant areas in the field. The first step involved determining what topics to emphasize as well as how to meet the learning objectives. This course was created to have a special emphasis on HRI design as it applies to mobile robotics. The presentation will provide the learning objectives as well as the details of the assignments necessary to meet those objectives. These assignments included weekly readings, quizzes, labs and projects. A big part of this course involved the implementation of the HRI concepts on an actual robot platform. The labs included creating a robot dancer, music machine, touch free robot racer, robot conga line, robot remote control, and Braitenberg vehicles. The first phase of the final project involved the creation of an urban search and rescue scenario. The second phase of the final project involved the students implementing one of the HRI concepts presented during the semester on their robot. One interesting note about this course is that it was taught to undergraduate students from nontechnical fields. Therefore, it was necessary to teach them about the technical aspects of robotics and programming while they also learned HRI.