Special Issue on Human Robot Interaction

Recent advances in robotics are disseminating robots into the social living environment as humanoids, pets, and caregivers. Novel human-robot interaction techniques and interfaces must be developed, however, to ensure that such robots interact as expected in daily life and work. Unlike conventional personal computers, such robots may assume a variety of configurations, such as industrial, wheel-based, ambulatory, remotely operated, autonomous, and wearable. They may also implement different communications modalities, including voice, video, haptics, and gestures. All of these aspects require that research on human-robot interaction become interdisciplinary, combining research from such fields as robotics, ergonomics, computer science and, psychology. In the field of computer science, new directions in human-computer interaction are emerging as post graphical user interfaces (GUIs). These include wearable, ubiquitous, and real-world computing. Such advances are thereby bridging the gap between robotics and computer science. The open-ended problems that potentially face include the following: What is the most desirable type of interaction between human beings and robots? What sort of technology will enable these interactions? How will human beings accept robots in their daily life and work? We are certain that readers of this special issue will be able to find many of the answers and become open to future directions concerning these problems. Any information that readers find herein will be a great pleasure to its editors.