Characteristics and tendencies in interactions in mixed human-robot groups

What is it about?

As robots are becoming more prevalent in various contexts throughout society, they often encounter situations in which they need to interact with more than one person at a time. Examples include wayfinding robots who lead groups of travelers through an airport or robots in industry who work alongside other robots and human workers. While this is the case, most research on human-robot interaction (HRI) still focuses on one-to-one interaction. This literature review investigates characteristics of non-dyadic HRI and identified its characteristics. Findings include the increasing focus on team constellations in which one human interacts with a multitude of digital devices including robots, a shift in research focus leading to an emphasis of non-dyadic interaction investigation, as well as the tendency of most HRI to be of a simultaneous (compared to sequential) nature.

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Photo by Eric Krull on Unsplash

Photo by Eric Krull on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We believe, the identification of these characteristics is important as it can help identify short comings of HRI, and the research of this, and thereby provide direction for future research.