At the most basic level, there has been progress on “human-aware” navigation algorithms that allow robots to safely occupy the same space as people.38C. Mavrogiannis‘Core Challenges of Social Robot Navigation: A Survey’ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, Vol. 12, p.36.
Collaborative robots, or “cobots”, are also capable of simple interactions like object handovers.39V. Ortenzi‘Object Handovers: A Review for Robotics’IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Vol. 37, p.1855.
But more sophisticated forms of human interaction are facilitated by deep reservoirs of implicit knowledge about social etiquette, and efforts to imbue this understanding and corresponding behaviour in machines remain rudimentary.
LLMs present a promising opportunity to chip away at these challenges by allowing humans to interface with robots through natural language.40C. Zhang‘Large Language Models for Human–Robot Interaction: A Review’Biomimetic Intelligence and Robotics, Vol. 3, p.100131.
There is even tentative evidence that they have some ability to model the mental states of humans.41J. Strachan‘Testing Theory of Mind in Large Language Models and Humans’Nature Human Behaviour, Vol. 8, p.1285.
The outputs of these models can be inconsistent and unreliable though, which makes them unsafe to deploy in many real-world situations.
Understanding how humans interact with robots, both physically and psychologically, and what their expectations of the technology are, is also crucial.42D. Zhang‘Human–Robot Interaction: Control, Analysis, and Design’ Better understanding of how integrating robots into groups of humans impacts social dynamics is also needed.43A. Rosenthal-von‘Social Dynamics in Human-Robot Groups – Possible Consequences of Unequal Adaptation to Group Members Through Machine Learning in Human-Robot Groups’Artificial Intelligence in HCI, p.396.
Given the prevalence of bias in AI training data, there is a risk that robots could replicate existing patterns of discrimination.44T. Hitron‘Implications of AI Bias in HRI: Risks (and Opportunities) When Interacting with a Biased Robot’Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Vol. 83, p.2023.
Developing socially adept robots which feel empathy, exhibit moral reasoning and act accordingly may also require them to be able to feel pain, raising many ethical questions.45M. Asada‘Artificial Pain May Induce Empathy, Morality, and Ethics in the Conscious Mind of Robots’Philosophies, Vol. 4, p.38.
Establishing legal guidelines and frameworks to address the rights and responsibilities of autonomous robots will be required.
