Multidisciplinary Collaboration for Socially Assistive Robotics
Papers from the AAAI Spring Symposium
Adriana Tapus, Marek Michalowski, and Selma Sabanovic, Cochairs

Technical Report SS-07-07
120 pp., $30.00
ISBN 978-1-57735-316-4

Human-robot interaction (HRI) for socially assistive applications emphasizes
the centrality of social relationships to our everyday experiences. As we
endow robots with interactive capabilities and integrate them into our lives,
research is increasingly focused on the design of social interactions that
have the potential to enhance the quality of life of a variety of
populations. Such robots should use social capabilities to assist humans in
physical or cognitive tasks such as rehabilitation and training exercises,
therapeutic and educational play, mobility, providing information, housework,
and so on. 

An effective socially assistive robot must understand and interact with its
environment safely, exhibit social behavior, and focus its attention and
communication on users in order to help them achieve specific goals. The
robot’s physical embodiment, appearance, verbal and nonverbal communicative
abilities, and empathy play key roles in its assistive effectiveness. The
complex integration of social factors and technical design encourages
problem-, task-, or issue-based engagement across multiple disciplines with
an artifact rich in both social and technological significance. 

Research in this field is therefore of interest to, and draws from, a range
of disciplines in engineering, health sciences, psychology, social and
cognitive sciences, and the arts. This collaboration requires close
coordination and communication between diverse communities of practitioners
at all stages of the process: inception, design, development, use, and
evaluation. Working in this domain is challenging due to the differences in
terminology, methodology, practices, and ethical considerations inherent in
multidisciplinary collaboration. 

From:
http://www.aaai.org/Press/Reports/Symposia/Spring/ss-07-07.php

Multidisciplinary Collaboration for Socially Assistive Robotics
http://www-robotics.usc.edu/~tapus/AAAISpringSymposium2007/

Accepted Papers
http://www-robotics.usc.edu/~tapus/AAAISpringSymposium2007/acceptedPapers.html
http://www-robotics.usc.edu/~tapus/AAAISpringSymposium2007/schedule.html
http://www.aaai.org/Library/Symposia/Spring/ss07-07.php
http://www.ai.sri.com/~nysmith/organizing/sss07/