About this Research Topic
Social robots have great potential to provide social, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive support to people with a variety of abilities and characteristics. Although still in its infancy, the field of social robotics has explored various aspects of human-robot interaction, such as multimodal communication and personalized interaction, and their applications in different domains including education and patient care. However, to evaluate the acceptance and efficacy of social robots and to understand their broader impacts in the real world, it is necessary to deploy these robot in the field for an extended period of time. Such deployment typically involves collaboration with different disciplines such as medicine, social psychology, clinical therapy, industrial design, public health, marketing, and education.
This Research Topic focuses on social robotics research with novel algorithms and computational modeling that have been or are being evaluated with intended users/consumers, patients or individuals with special needs. Special focus will be given to results that arose from multidisciplinary studies in which the roles and impacts of social robots are evaluated in real-world settings, preferably in collaboration between engineering, industrial design, clinical science, medicine, social psychology, marketing, and education.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of topics on interest:
• Long-term human-robot interaction
• Interaction with intended users and its realistic impacts
• Ecologically valid interaction (natural human environments)
• Methodologies for evaluation and benchmarking of real world human-robot interaction
• Interdisciplinary design and evaluation of autonomous robots for real-world interaction and impacts
• Ethics of robots in natural human environments, sharing public spaces
• Socio-emotional impacts of robots in long-term interaction
• Consumer acceptance of robots and their behavior and psychology toward robots
• Societal impacts of domestic robots in human ecology
• Behavioral changes toward robots over time
This Research Topic focuses on social robotics research with novel algorithms and computational modeling that have been or are being evaluated with intended users/consumers, patients or individuals with special needs. Special focus will be given to results that arose from multidisciplinary studies in which the roles and impacts of social robots are evaluated in real-world settings, preferably in collaboration between engineering, industrial design, clinical science, medicine, social psychology, marketing, and education.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of topics on interest:
• Long-term human-robot interaction
• Interaction with intended users and its realistic impacts
• Ecologically valid interaction (natural human environments)
• Methodologies for evaluation and benchmarking of real world human-robot interaction
• Interdisciplinary design and evaluation of autonomous robots for real-world interaction and impacts
• Ethics of robots in natural human environments, sharing public spaces
• Socio-emotional impacts of robots in long-term interaction
• Consumer acceptance of robots and their behavior and psychology toward robots
• Societal impacts of domestic robots in human ecology
• Behavioral changes toward robots over time
Keywords: Social Robot, Human-Robot Interaction, Multimodal Communication, Personalized Interaction, Educational Robot, Healthcare Robot
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
