Social Robotics
Overview
As robots become more and more ubiquitous in our everyday lives, it becomes essential to study their behaviour in real-world social environments. Robots placed in human-centred environments need to make decisions that conform to social notions effortlessly in a flexible manner. They need to learn to navigate and interact with humans in a ‘socially-aware manner’. Humans need to feel safe enough to trust robot actions in everyday environments. In a similar manner, a robot dependent on human assistance also needs to identify if the guidance given to it is trustworthy. A mutual understanding between the two is critical in human-robot interaction scenarios. Research in social robotics deals with developing algorithms towards achieving these goals.