Human-Robot Interaction

Human-Robot Interaction Human-Robot Interaction Edited by Nilanjan Sarkar I-Tech Education and Publishing IV Published by I-Tech Education and Publishing I-Tech Education and Publishing Vienna Austria Abstracting and non-profit use of the material is permitted with credit to the source. Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published articles. Publisher assumes no responsibility liability for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained inside. After this work has been published by the I-Tech Education and Publishing, authors have the right to repub-lish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are an author or editor, and the make other personal use of the work. © 2007 I-Tech Education and Publishing www.ars-journal.com Additional copies can be obtained from: publication@ars-journal.com First published September 2007 Printed in Croatia A catalogue record for this bookis available from the Austrian Library. Human-Robot Interaction, Edited by Nilanjan Sarkar p. cm. ISBN 978-3-902613-13-4 1. Human-Robot Interaction. 2. Applications. I. Nilanjan Sarkar V Preface Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) has been an important research area during the last decade. As robots have become increasingly more versatile, they have been useful in a variety of applications where the robots and human are expected to in-teract very closely. It has thus become necessary to clearly understand the nature of human-robot interaction so that new tools and techniques can be developed to allow human and robot to work together in a seamless, robust and natural manner. Human-robot interaction research is diverse and covers a wide range of topics. All aspects of human factors and robotics are within the purview of HRI research so far as they provide insight into how to improve our understanding in developing effective tools, protocols, and systems to enhance HRI. For example, a significant research effort is being devoted to designing human-robot interface that makes it easier for the people to interact with robots. Researchers are investigating how to improve the current interfaces so that multiple users can interact with multiple ro-bots simultaneously. There are ongoing efforts to understand how to effectively in-corporate multi-modal interaction capabilities within HRI. The role of emotion in HRI is also another important research area so that human and robot can under-stand each other’s affective expressions. Developing suitable control architecture that facilitates versatile human-robot teaming and collaboration is essential for HRI. Such a control architecture proposes the basis for interaction and drives fur-ther research into sensor development, communication modes and protocols, and system development. Additionally, a large part of HRI research involves applying and learning lessons from various human-robot applications. It is neither possible nor is it our intention to cover every important work in this important research field in one volume. HRI is an extremely active research field where new and important work is being published at a fast pace. However, we be-lieve that HRI as a research field has matured enough to merit a compilation of the outstanding work in the field in the form of a book. This book, which presents out-standing work from the leading HRI researchers covering a wide spectrum of top-ics, is an effort to capture and present some of the important contributions in HRI in one volume. I hope that this book will benefit both experts and novice and pro-vide a thorough understanding of the exciting field of HRI. Editor Nilanjan Sarkar Vanderbilt University USA ... - tailieumienphi.vn