Socially assistive robotics [Grand Challenges of Robotics]

TLDR

Socially intelligent robotics seeks to create robots that exhibit natural social qualities, using their physical embodiment to communicate and assist humans, and the field is currently at a pivotal stage where collaboration between technologists and beneficiaries is essential to realize its potential to improve quality of life. Early studies show that socially assistive robotics holds great promise, and within the next decade we anticipate its deployment in hospitals, schools, and homes to monitor, encourage, and assist users in therapeutic programs.

Abstract

Socially intelligent robotics is the pursuit of creating robots capable of exhibiting natural-appearing social qualities. Beyond the basic capabilities of moving and acting autonomously, the field has focused on the use of the robot's physical embodiment to communicate and interact with users in a social and engaging manner. One of its components, socially assistive robotics, focuses on helping human users through social rather than physical interaction. Early results already demonstrate the promises of socially assistive robotics, a new interdisciplinary research area with large horizons of fascinating and much needed research. Even as socially assistive robotic technology is still in its early stages of development, the next decade promises systems that will be used in hospitals, schools, and homes in therapeutic programs that monitor, encourage, and assist their users. This is an important time in the development of the field, when the board technical community and the beneficiary populations must work together to shape the field toward its intended impact on improved human quality of life