This course will focus on the emerging field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). This multidisciplinary research area draws from: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Human-Computer Interaction, and Cognitive Psychology. The aim of this course is to introduce some of the core human-robot interaction challenges: Human-robot teamwork and collaboration, robots learning from people, robots sensing and modeling people in their environments. Development of computational models of social intelligence for these robots that will allow them to have interactions that are natural and intuitive for a human partner will be discussed. The course will also address experimental methods for evaluating robots deployed in human environments.

Course participants will:

• Explore the computational problems in some of the core human-robot interaction challenges: Human-robot teamwork and collaboration, robots learning from people, robots sensing and modeling people in their environments.
• Learn how humans perceive other humans, what this means for computational perception, and state of the art techniques for robots seeing humans.
• Investigate experimental methods for evaluating robots deployed in human environments.
• Gain a working understanding of the role of the corporate anthropologist thus enabling them to decide whether, when, and what a corporate anthropologist might contribute to a project.

• Background in human collaborative activity, what this means for designing robots for human-robot teamwork, and state of the art in human-robot teamwork.
• Background in human social learning, what this means for designing robots that learn from humans, and state of the art in robot learning from human demonstration.
• Background in how humans perceive other humans, what this means for computational perception, and state of the art techniques for robots seeing humans.
• Origins of Methods: History of Anthropology Places in the LifeCycle Where These Methods Can be Used and Product/Process Outcomes
• Basics of Interviewing and Observation

Attendees will each receive copies of handouts.

• Andrea Thomaz
• Beki Grinter
• Irfan Essa