User:Edithermanson/sandbox2

Human-robot interaction refers to the application of robotic technologies to various aspects of human life. Robots are used by humans for industry, medicine, and companionship, among other purposes.

Industrial Robots
Industrial robots have been implemented to collaborate with humans to perform industrial manufacturing tasks. While humans have the flexibility and the intelligence to consider different approaches to solve the problem, choose the best option among all choices, and then command robots to perform assigned tasks, robots are able to be more precise and more consistent in performing repetitive and dangerous work. Together, the collaboration of industrial robots and humans demonstrates that robots have the capabilities to ensure efficiency of manufacturing and assembling. However, there are persistent concerns about the safety of human-robot collaboration, since industrial robots have the ability to move heavy objects and operate often dangerous and sharp tools, quickly and with force. As a result, this presents a potential threat to the people who work in the same workspace.

Rehabilitation
A rehabilitation robot is an example of a robot-aided system implemented in health care. This type of robot would aid stroke survivors or individuals with neurological impairment to recover their hand and finger movements. In the past few decades, the idea of how human and robot interact with each other is one factor that has been widely considered in the design of rehabilitation robots. For instance, human-robot interaction plays an important role in designing exoskeleton rehabilitation robots since the exoskeleton system makes direct contact with humans’ body.

Elder Care and Companion Robot
Nursing robots are aimed to provide assistance to elderly people who may have faced a decline in physical and cognitive function, and, consequently, developed psychosocial issues. By assisting in daily physical activities, physical assistance from the robots would allow the elderly to have a sense of autonomy and feel that they are still able to take care of themselves and stay in their own homes.



Autism Intervention
Over the past decade, human-robot interaction has shown promising outcomes in autism intervention. Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are more likely to connect with robots than humans, and using social robots is considered to be a beneficial approach to help these children with ASD. However, social robots that are used to intervene in children's ASD are not viewed as viable treatment by clinical communities because the study of using social robots in ASD intervention, often, does not follow standard research protocol. In addition, the outcome of the research could not demonstrate a consistent positive effect that could be considered as evidence-based practice (EBP) based on the clinical systematic evaluation. As a result, the researchers have started to establish guidelines which suggest how to conduct studies with robot-mediated intervention and hence produce reliable data that could be treated as EBP that would allow clinicians to choose to use robots in ASD intervention.

Automatic Driving
A specific example of human-robot interaction is the human-vehicle interaction in automated driving. The goal of human-vehicle cooperation is to ensure safety, security, and comfort in automated driving systems. The continued improvement in this system and the progress in advancements towards highly and fully automated vehicles aim to make the driving experience safer and more efficient in which humans do not need to intervene in the driving process when there is an unexpected driving condition such as a pedestrian walking across the street when it is not supposed to.

Search and Rescue
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV) have the potential to assist search and rescue work in wilderness areas, such as locating a missing person remotely from the evidence that they left in surrounding areas. The system integrates autonomy and information, such as coverage maps, GPS information and quality search video, to support humans performing the search and rescue work efficiently in the given limited time.



Space Exploration
Humans have been working on achieving the next breakthrough in space exploration, such as a manned mission to Mars. This challenge identified the need for developing planetary rovers that are able to assist astronauts and support their operations during their mission. The collaboration between rovers, unmanned aerial vehicles, and humans enables leveraging capabilities from all sides and optimizes task performance.