AUTHOR=Wudarczyk Olga A. , Kirtay Murat , Kuhlen Anna K. , Abdel Rahman Rasha , Haynes John-Dylan , Hafner Verena V. , Pischedda Doris TITLE=Bringing Together Robotics, Neuroscience, and Psychology: Lessons Learned From an Interdisciplinary Project JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience VOLUME=15 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.630789 DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2021.630789 ISSN=1662-5161 ABSTRACT=

The diversified methodology and expertise of interdisciplinary research teams provide the opportunity to overcome the limited perspectives of individual disciplines. This is particularly true at the interface of Robotics, Neuroscience, and Psychology as the three fields have quite different perspectives and approaches to offer. Nonetheless, aligning backgrounds and interdisciplinary expectations can present challenges due to varied research cultures and practices. Overcoming these challenges stands at the beginning of each productive collaboration and thus is a mandatory step in cognitive neurorobotics. In this article, we share eight lessons that we learned from our ongoing interdisciplinary project on human-robot and robot-robot interaction in social settings. These lessons provide practical advice for scientists initiating interdisciplinary research endeavors. Our advice can help to avoid early problems and deal with differences between research fields, prepare for and anticipate challenges, align project expectations, and speed up research progress, thus promoting effective interdisciplinary research across Robotics, Neuroscience, and Psychology.