HUMAN-ROBOT

INTERACTION

Human-robot interaction is more than just providing a natural form of communication (spoken language, pointing, etc.) for a better “natural” user interface, it is about how the human and robot work together as a joint cognitive system to get the job done. Hmmm, the idea of a human and robot working as a team seems an appropriate for describing how teleoperation works, but not if the robot was delegated a task to handle autonomously (aka taskable agency).  Well, consider J.A.R.V.I.S.  in the Iron Man movies. Even when J.A.R.V.I.S. is acting autonomously while Tony is doing something else, J.A.R.V.I.S. has to understand Tony’s intent (or anticipate Tony’s real intent), report back when done, or let him know if something is going wrong. This is why it is called an “interaction” instead of a “interface”- the fundamental transactions between Tony and J.A.R.V.I.S. are more than Tony selecting options or delegating tasks or J.A.R.V.I.S. giving an audible warning, they are bi-directional cognitive transactions.

 

See the RTSF human-robot interaction topic below for books and movies that touch on human-robot interaction. Robotics Through Science Fiction: Artificial Intelligence Explained Through Six Classic Robot Stories has a chapter on HRI which provides a light introduction using the ultimate tale of a social robot: Super Toys Last All Summer. A good technical introduction to the challenges in creating a team mate like J.A.R.V.I.S. is the classic paper Ten Challenges for Making Automation a Team Player

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