Objectives

Social robots can have several roles such as home care robots (e.g. for seniors), mediators (e.g. for persons with autism spectrum disorders), and companions (e.g. for children alone at home). When a new application/behavior is created on a robot, researchers need to validate it. Obviously, they need to validate technical aspects: has the robot correctly executed its tasks, has it correctly moved its actuators, etc. Nevertheless, they also need to validate psychological aspects. Indeed, literature shows that the interaction between a robot and a human is complex. Robots, with their presence, and their capabilities to act on our environment, influence people. And literature also shows that humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize robots, and can reject a robot (for example if the robot does not respect particular social norms). Evaluating an application on a robot is complex, because the need to understand how humans experience the interaction is not easily met with our current methodologies. Some common objectives in HRI are to “maximize” well-being, to build robots which are acceptable, to build robots which can efficiently help people. We need to understand the relationship between robots and humans, for example studying which social skills are important, what is the impact of robots, which roles the robot can and cannot fulfil and so on. To learn about the robots and about the interaction, we need to study humans when interacting with robots.

People who create robot applications are typically computer scientists or roboticists. They often are not experts in evaluating human-robot interactions and their effects. As such input from psychologists, ethologists, sociologists, philosophers, anthropologists, ergonomists (not exhaustive list), who are specialists in analyzing human behaviors and attitudes, is invaluable. These disciplines use different methodologies, but all are to a large extent readily available for Human-Robot Interaction studies. For example, Human-Robot Interactions are mainly evaluated in controlled environments, such as laboratory settings. Even if these types of evaluations bring knowledge, they do not help with evaluating Human-Robot Interactions in natural contexts. We also notice that the existing literature shows articles presenting studies performed without specialists, which may contain some methodological errors or biases. Therefore, we believe it is necessary to standardize Human-Robot Interaction evaluation methods.