Guest editorial: special issue on socially assistive robotics

Abstract

Welcome to the Autonomous Robots special issue on the emerging area of Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR). What is SAR? Socially assistive robotics focuses on providing assistance through social rather than physical interaction between the robot and the human user. SAR has the potential to enhance human quality of life for large user populations, including the elderly, people with physical impairments, those involved in rehabilitation therapy (e.g., post-stroke patients), and people with cognitive disabilities and social and developmental disorders (e.g., children with autism spectrum disorder, children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD)). Socially assistive robotics has a great variety of potential uses and associated multi-faceted research and usability challenges. Numerous interesting questions and issues need to be addressed as we aim toward including robust, reliable, user-friendly, empathetic, and encouraging robots in our daily lives. Those questions include: “What are the circumstances in which people (especially those with special needs) accept an assistive robot in their environment?” “What modes of communication should the robot employ?” “What is the role of the robot’s physical embodiment?” “How to integrate the a priori knowledge about the users into the robot system?” “How can the human-robot interaction design ensure safety?” and “How are friendly, familiar, usable, and effective interaction models with a robot to be designed?”