Human-Robot Interaction: Toward Usable Personal Service Robots

The widespread adoption of personal service robots will likely depend on how well they interact with users. This chapter was motivated by a desire to facilitate the design of usable personal service robots. Toward that end, this chapter reviews the literature concerning people interacting with personal service robots. First, ongoing research related to the design of personal service robots is discussed. This material is organized around generic activities that would take place when a user initiates interaction with a future personal service robot, for example, understanding the robot’s affordances or its cognitive capabilities, as well as when a personal service robot initiates interaction with a user, for example, understanding the user’s intent or engaging and communicating with the user. Second, research areas that deserve more attention from the human-robot interaction community are discussed, for example, understanding when people do and do not treat robots as if they were people. Throughout the chapter, recommendations for the design of future personal service robots are offered along with recommendations for future research.