Robots Providing Cognitive Assistance in Shared Workspaces

Human-Robot Collaboration is an area of particular current interest, with the attempt to make robots more generally useful in contexts where they work side-by-side with humans. Currently, efforts typically focus on the sensory and motor aspects of the task on the part of the robot to enable them to function safely and effectively given an assigned task. In the present contribution, we rather focus on the cognitive faculties of the human worker by attempting to incorporate known (from psychology) properties of human cognition. In a proof-of-concept study, we demonstrate how applying characteristics of human categorical perception to the type of robot assistance impacts on task performance and experience of the participants. This lays the foundation for further developments in cognitive assistance and collaboration in side-by-side working for humans and robots