The missions of robots are mainly directed to acquit humans from arduous and repetitive tasks. In the past, application fields were mainly industrial. In addition, the surrounding environments of the robots were static and the human interventions were not needed.
Later, as humans developed more autonomous and intelligent robots, human-robot collaboration and interaction became possible. Furthermore, newly emerged technologies allowed the robots performing housework, helping elderly or disabled people with particular capabilities, etc. Thus, humans got direct or indirect contact with the robots, which became able to understand human language in order to interact with them. In addition, due to advances in computing power, sensor systems, etc., the reactive behaviors of the robots could be assured in the dynamic and unknown environments.
In recent years, the advent of the digitization in the industry allows building flexible factories. On a single production line, several products can be launched simultaneously. Workers are thus included in the manufacturing process as helpers. Moreover, human operators can communicate/collaborate with the robots without difficulty.
Industrial and service robots are converging to some extent and consequently sharing very similar issues. Accordingly, they may follow similar problem-solving approaches.
The workshop aims at discussing the state-of-the-art and new ideas about the similarities between industrial and service robotics in terms of issues and dedicated solutions. The purpose of the workshop is also to identify some specific particularities of service robotics in human-robot interaction and scale the approaches to industrial robotics. In addition, concepts inspired by service robotics scalable to the industry are welcome.
This workshop is dedicated to students and academics interested in human-robot interaction and collaboration, specialists in service robotics and interested in extending their ideas to industrial robotics or vice-versa.