Human-Robot Interaction

Course at a Glance
The course will introduce the participants to the field of Human-Robot Interaction. It will discuss the contributions of the different disciplines involved and will illustrate the various methods adopted for the investigation of such a multidisciplinary topic.

Instructors
Alessandra Sciutti alessandra.sciutti@iit.it
Francesco Rea francesco.rea@iit.it

Hours and Credits
Total of 15 hours (6 classes of 2 hours each plus 1 class of 3 hours)

Synopsis
Understanding social interaction is a very challenging task. The dynamics of two agents interacting together is much more complex than just the sum of the behaviours of the two individuals. The actions, the movements and even the perceptual strategies each partner chooses are substantially modified and adapted to the cooperation. Notwithstanding its complexity, social interaction is of great interest not only for disciplines as neuroscience or psychology, but also from an engineering perspective. Indeed one of the biggest obstacles to
a pervasive use of robots supporting and helping humans in their everyday chores relies on the absence of an intuitive communication between robotic devices and non-expert users.
Several attempts have been made at achieving seamless interaction, even with positive outcomes in the context of the small manufacturing industries (e.g., the manufacturing robot Baxter). However the lack of a systematic understanding of what works and why does not allow yet for a generalization of this success in different domains. Hence, the study of
Human-Robot Interaction is becoming progressively more central to foster a new generation of robots interacting naturally with their human partners.
In this course we will examine the different roles a robot could play in the context of humanrobot interaction, as for instance the tutor, the collaborator, the companion or the tool of investigation. We will discuss the relevance of robot perceptual, motor and cognitive abilities for natural human-robot interaction and the good features and limitations of the currently available platforms. Furthermore the course will present the different methods adopted to investigate and evaluate the interaction between humans and robots.

Syllabus
- Taxonomy and Open Challenges for HRI.
- The importance of Robot Shape, Motion and Cognition.
- Metrics and Experimental Design.
- Models of Robot Perception in HRI
- Models of Robot Action in HRI
- Attention System

Final exam
There will be a final examination decided by the instructors.

Prerequisites
None

Reading List
There is no single text on HRI, but readings will be assigned for each class

Venue
IIT, Via Morego 30, 16163 Genova (GE)

Course dates
October-November 2017