Human-centered AI and robotics

Frank Kirchner,Raja Chatila,Stephane Doncieux,Sirko Straube

doi:10.1186/s42467-021-00014-x

Abstract

Robotics has a special place in AI as robots are connected to the real world and robots increasingly appear in humans everyday environment, from home to industry. Apart from cases were robots are expected to completely replace them, humans will largely benefit from real interactions with such robots. This is not only true for complex interaction scenarios like robots serving as guides, companions or members in a team, but also for more predefined functions like autonomous transport of people or goods. More and more, robots need suitable interfaces to interact with humans in a way that humans feel comfortable and that takes into account the need for a certain transparency about actions taken. The paper describes the requirements and state-of-the-art for a human-centered robotics research and development, including verbal and non-verbal interaction, understanding and learning from each other, as well as ethical questions that have to be dealt with if robots will be included in our everyday environment, influencing human life and societies.

Highlights

Already 30 years ago, people have learned in school that automation of facilities is replacing human workers, but over time people recognized in parallel that working profiles are changing and that new type of work is created through this development, so that the effect was rather a change in industry and not a mere replacement of work
We see that AI systems are getting increasingly powerful in many domains that were initially solvable only using human intelligence and cognition, starting this debate anew
We see at the same time with a closer look, that the performance of AI in such selected domains may outrun that of humans, the mechanisms and algorithms applied do not necessarily resemble human intelligence and methodology, and may even not involve any kind of cognition

Summary

Introduction

Already 30 years ago, people have learned in school that automation of facilities is replacing human workers, but over time people recognized in parallel that working profiles are changing and that new type of work is created through this development, so that the effect was rather a change in industry and not a mere replacement of work. Anthropomorphic robots significantly draw the attention of the public and creates high expectations in different service robotics applications, but the way they are perceived and their acceptance is a complex function involving multiple factors, including user culture, context and quality of the interaction or even degree of human likeness [75]. The impact of this last point, in particular, is not trivial. See the reviews by Fink [80] or Złotowski et al [81]

Understanding humans and human intentions

Making robots understandable for humans

Conclusion