Challenges in Collaborative HRI for Remote Robot Teams

Collaboration between human supervisors and remote teams of robots is highly challenging, particularly in high-stakes, distant, hazardous locations, such as off-shore energy platforms. In order for these teams of robots to truly be beneficial, they need to be trusted to operate autonomously, performing tasks such as inspection and emergency response, thus reducing the number of personnel placed in harm's way. As remote robots are generally trusted less than robots in close-proximity, we present a solution to instil trust in the operator through a `mediator robot' that can exhibit social skills, alongside sophisticated visualisation techniques. In this position paper, we present general challenges and then take a closer look at one challenge in particular, discussing an initial study, which investigates the relationship between the level of control the supervisor hands over to the mediator robot and how this affects their trust. We show that the supervisor is more likely to have higher trust overall if their initial experience involves handing over control of the emergency situation to the robotic assistant. We discuss this result, here, as well as other challenges and interaction techniques for human-robot collaboration.Comment: 9 pages. Peer reviewed position paper accepted in the CHI 2019 Workshop: The Challenges of Working on Social Robots that Collaborate with People (SIRCHI2019), ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 2019, Glasgow, U

Strange Carers

The present comment focuses on the distinction between attachment as bond formation and expectations of availability and responsiveness (security) within attachment relationships. We enumerate key components of bonding and functions of carer secure base support. Our analysis has implications for design and suggests that robots are unlikely to serve effectively as sole carers. Even with robots as part-time carers, attachment-like bonds would likely focus on human carers. Similarly, although infants and children would certainly build expectations regarding the availability and responsiveness of robot carers, the quality of human care would probably be the determining influence on later development and competence. Notwithstanding their limitations of robots as attachment figures they have considerable potential to extend parental care and enrich infant exploration. The Sharkey’s paper and further consideration of robots as carers for infants, children, older adults, an