Guest Editors: Luca Brayda and Ryad Chellali (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genoa, Italy)
Background:
Human-robot interaction is an important research area and essential for eventual seamless human-robot cohabitation. Human-human interaction and communication has a vast literature base that continues to be expanded by linguists, communication scientists, psychologists, and neuroscientists among others. Topics being studied in this domain include empathy, mirror neurons and theory of mind. A fundamental question is whether the same, or similar, human-human interaction mechanisms also drive human-robot interactions, an issue which is especially relevant for the field of social robotics. Although the controllable, measurable, and observable nature of robots provides researchers with an effectively infinite set of experimental conditions, the field of human-robot interaction is nevertheless constrained by a shortage of objective measurement methods for evaluating the nature and quality of communication among the elements of such systems.
Understanding the behavioural mechanisms of users of robots and of artificial agents can be beneficial for several other research topics including modeling and predicting attention, workload, boredom, and stress levels.
Other applications include pilot and vehicle drivers interfaces, tele-robot users, tele-surgeons, tele-touch technology, assistive robotic technology, assessment of robot companions and robotherapy, of prosthetic robotic technologies, robot design rules, multi-modal health monitoring systems, and service robotics.
Current approaches to evaluative recording include such overt measures as gestures, facial expressions, verbal speech, eye gaze, body language, impulsive movements, as well as such autonomic responses as breathing patterns, body temperature, galvanic skin response, and heart rate. An arguably more difficult challenge involves inferring more covert affective states, encompassing emotional reactions and non-verbal messages. A higher objective, of course, is to transcend the many often isolated data gathering efforts and combine the various approaches through classification and interpretation, using the tools of (for example) neuroscience, psychology, signal processing, system identification and modelling, and affective computing. Our ultimate goal is to establish a set of objective (preferably non-intrusive) metrics, based on behavioural and biological data, which provide insight into human physical, emotional and cognitive states in the human-robot interaction loop. It is anticipated that such metrics will be valuable as a preferably quantitative, but possibly also qualitative, way of concurrently advancing our knowledge base of both human-robot and human-human interactions.
Topics (solicited, but not limited to):
- Objective measurements of efficiency, cognitive load and attention
- Unimodal evaluation of human interaction with robots and artificial agents via optical (expressions, gestures, gaze), electrical (EEG, EOG, ECG, EMG, GSR, HR), auditory (verbal and non verbal speech) signal analysis
- Multimodal evaluation of human interaction with robots and artificial/virtual agents
- Multimodal interaction, sensory fusion, sensory substitution and integration
- Tele-touch and touch-based interaction with robots
- Measuring human entrainment with robots
- Speech, emotion, gesture recognition and synthesis
- Brain Computer Interfaces
- Augmented Cognition
- Measuring robot appearance, acceptance, expectation and the Uncanny Valley
- Evaluation of robotherapy, rehabilitation and assistive technologies
Authors who intend to submit a manuscript are encouraged to contact both guest editors as soon as possible :
luca.brayda@iit.it , ryad.chellali@iit.it
in order to ensure that the planned submission falls within the aims and scope of the special issue.