Helping People Through Space and Time: Assistance as a Perspective on Human-Robot Interaction

Abstract

As assistive robotics has expanded to many task domains, comparing assistive strategies among the varieties of research becomes increasingly difficult. To begin to unify the disparate domains into a more general theory of assistance, we present a definition of assistance, a survey of existing work, and three key design axes that occur in many domains and benefit from the examination of assistance as a whole. We first define an assistance perspective that focuses on understanding a robot that is in control of its actions but subordinate to a user’s goals. Next, we use this perspective to explore design axes that arise from the problem of assistance more generally and explore how these axes have comparable trade-offs across many domains. We investigate how the assistive robot handles other people in the interaction, how the robot design can operate in a variety of action spaces to enact similar goals, and how assistive robots can vary the timing of their actions relative to the user’s behavior. While these axes are by no means comprehensive, we propose them as useful tools for unifying assistance research across domains and as examples of how taking a broader perspective on assistance enables more cross-domain theorizing about assistance.

Managing social-educational robotics for students with autism spectrum disorder through business model canvas and customer discovery

“…Students with ASD show minimal activation of the brain’s reward system in response to social reinforcement, unlike their typically developing (TD) peers, for whom social interactions are inherently rewarding ( Chevallier et al, 2012 ). To simulate social interaction between humans, humanoid (anthropomorphic) robots should integrate the social motivation mechanisms of the human brain for an effective HRI ( Arora and Arora, 2020 ; Arora et al, 2022 ; Bertacchini et al, 2022 ; Leoste et al, 2022 ; Newman et al, 2022 ; Salhi et al, 2022 ; Bharatharaj et al, 2023 ; Soleiman et al, 2023 ). Given the student’s ASD characteristics, it appears worthwhile to investigate whether a social robot, with its motivational appeal, behavioral repetition, simplified appearance, and lack of social judgment, might appeal more to people with ASD than humans ( Bertacchini et al, 2022 ; Leoste et al, 2022 ; Salhi et al, 2022 ; Bharatharaj et al, 2023 ; Soleiman et al, 2023 ).…”

“…HRI research is a rapidly expanding field of artificial intelligence (AI) encompassing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), robotics, human-computer interaction, psychology, and social sciences. Researchers are now investigating the social, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of HRI ( Newman et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Social robots, especially humanoids, are popular with humans due to their anthropomorphic, humanlike features and their capability to perform autonomous movements, sensory-motor tasks, and verbal and non-verbal communications ( Zhang et al, 2019 ; Arora et al, 2022 ; Bertacchini et al, 2022 ). Social robotics researchers have defined ‘social robots’ in the HRI literature as ‘sociable’ (i.e., robots can be used as tools/aid for social cognition), ‘socially evocative’ (i.e., robots are anthropomorphic and evoke positive feelings in humans during human-robot interaction), ‘socially intelligent’ (i.e., robots portray social intelligence and exhibit models of social competence and human cognition), ‘socially situated’ (i.e., robots are intelligent beings and can distinguish objects and other social agents in their social space), and ‘socially interactive’ (i.e., robots can be utilized for peer-to-peer HRI for social interaction and interventions with humans) agents ( Mahdi et al, 2022 ; Newman et al, 2022 ; Roesler, 2023 ).…”