Introduction
Social robots have great potential to provide social, behavioral, emotional and cognitive support for people with various characteristics and needs. Although still in its infancy, the field of social robotics has explored various aspects of human-robot interaction (IRH), such as multimodal communication and personalized interaction, and their applications in different fields, including the education and patient care. However, to assess the acceptance and effectiveness of social robots and to understand their wider impacts in the real world, it is necessary to deploy these robots in the “wild” field for a long time. Such deployment generally involves collaboration with different disciplines such as medicine, social psychology, clinical therapy, industrial design, public health, marketing and education.
Thus, this research subject focuses on research on social robotics with new algorithms and computer modeling that has been or are assessed with users / consumers, patients or people with special needs. A particular objective was given to the results from multidisciplinary studies in which the roles and impacts of social robots are assessed in “real” contexts, in particular in collaboration between engineering, industrial design, clinical sciences, the Medicine, social psychology, marketing and education.
Research subject training
This research subject is emerged from a discussion between young people and active researchers from HRI – Dr. Park and Dr. Huang of the United States, Dr. Ros of Spain, Dr. Kwak of South Korea and Dr. Lemaignan From the United Kingdom – which all carried out the emerging and crucial needs to explore the subject more and obtain additional comments from the many HRI researchers.
Research subject content
As expected, the articles submitted and accepted have shown multidisciplinary characteristics and combined themes from the proposed research subject. Among the multiple mixed themes, however, we could identify the four main important research themes and research trends, where social robots play an active role in the “wild” borders of human-robot interaction.
HRI theories and computer modeling
We have seen continuous efforts to apply the theories of psychology with more solid experimental parameters in the real world. A recent example is by Agrigoroaie et al. who applied the theory of regulatory concentration in the communication of Human-Robot, with which a Tiago robot has approached people with two communication methodologies based on the type of promotion or the type of prevention, and has evaluated its efficiency in correlation with the types of regulatory concentration of individuals (N = 29).
We have also found increased efforts in the design of calculation models for MRI in nature, especially in clinical fields. Clabaugh et al. Propose a mathematical tutoring system for children with autism spectrum disorder (TSA) (4 to 7 years old), where learning to strengthen is used to personalize the teaching and comments of robots. Javed et al. Apply automatic learning algorithms to derive personalized models to acquire social commitment measures for children with ASD (4 to 12 years).
Hri Longitudinal and large group
Over the past 10 years, longitudinal and larger studies in IRH groups have aroused great interest from the community aimed at building systems that can commit and adapt to different users in time with the A ambition to get closer to a world where robots can really be part of our daily life. The educational framework is one of the typical fields where the application of social robots has been studied. A mathematical tutoring system proposed by Clabaugh et al. Was evaluated with 17 children with ASD in the interventions of one month at home. A peer -type social robot for language learning designed by Kory-Westlund and Breazeal was developed and the role of “report” was studied in their 2 -month study with 17 children. In addition to education, social robots are used for the care for the elderly; Van Maris et al. explored the longitudinal effects of the elderly (N = 17) Interact with social robots.
HRI in public, in particular interaction with a large group of people is another subject of emerging research. Frane and al. studied the impact of group characteristics and standards in interaction with a robot in public circles and its influences on people’s behavior changes.
HRI in health care and special education
The TSA is one of the areas of special education where socially robot systems (SAR) have shown potential advantages, generally supporting social development, but without limiting itself. An example is a work proposed by Clabaugh et al.Where they offer a tutoring system for mathematics problems on the theme of space addressed to young children with ASD while integrating social contexts in the learning environment. Another work of Javed et al. Presents a robotic game comrade with socio-emotional interventions with personalized surveillance of engagement.
Diabetes management is another area linked to health care where long -term long -term interventions are essential. Neerincx et al. Present the results of a 4-year-old European project, where they deploy the socio-cognitive engineering methodology to design and integrate a SAR, tested for several months with large groups of children.
Although the evaluation of SAR systems with end users is vital, it is just as important to consider the views of other stakeholders to guide the design of these systems. As such, Alcorn et al. Present an analysis of the points of view of educators on the use of SAR systems in TSA suggesting guidelines to the HRI community, not only with regard to the design of robotic systems, but also to propose areas of research that should be taken into account.
Emotions and ethics
Although socially assistant robots are particularly characterized by their potential in participation in socio-emotional interactions with people, these robots are currently not as emotionally capable as humans. Indeed, emotional behavior displayed by robots can be considered an emotional deception, perhaps leading to broader ethical concerns. Van Maris et al. studied how emotional behavior by a social robot can influence the perceptions of the elderly on the robot.
On the other hand, the behavior of social robots could possibly help to alleviate human negative psychological states such as stress. Björling et al. Explored how adolescents can interact with social robots in the school environment where adolescents could feel stressed. Little research on robotics and adolescents have been carried out to date: this article, based on mixed methods where adolescents are in turn users, experimenters and witnesses, offers a very new overview of the way social robots could support this population.
Conclusions
With the development of robotic technologies, it is imperative to develop social robots that support people in their daily lives. The articles published in this issue collectively show the recent and advanced application of theories from various academic fields such as health care, education, social psychology on social robots and IRH. More and more efforts are focused on children / adolescents and the elderly who need or can benefit from the company of robots. We believe that these collective efforts will help to extract more knowledge concerning the nature of the interaction between humans and robots, that we hope to be used to build successful social robots “in nature”, developing in fields of wider applications in various human fields (age, sex, culture, etc.). More specifically, subjects presented by articles, including HRI theories and computer modeling, HRI longitudinal and larger group, IRH in health care and special education, thus in various parameters of the real world. These studies will shed new pathways concerning social robots which are closely linked to users, which enriches their satisfaction with their lives by successfully meeting their needs. We believe that these collaboration efforts will contribute to the subsequent development of theory and knowledge concerning IRH, which stimulates the acceptance of social robots by people in their daily life.
Contributions from authors
CP and C-MH designed the idea of the subject of research and recruited RR, SSK and SL to form a team of invited publishers for this research subject. Together, this team of invited publishers designed the summary of the research subject and the international call for articles. The publishers examined the articles submitted within their expertise and accepted nine articles for this research subject. This editorial was compiled thanks to joint efforts from the five invited publishers. All the authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that research has been carried out in the absence of commercial or financial relations which could be interpreted as a potential conflict of interest.
Thanks
The associated publishers invited to this research subject wish to express their gratitude to Dr. Bilge Mutlu, specialized editor-in-chief of borders in Robotics and AI: Human-Robot Interaction, for the opportunity to publish this research subject. We greatly appreciate the responsiveness of the editor -in -chief of specialties, associated publishers and staff members on opportune support throughout the examination and publication processes. We also express our sincere gratitude to the many examiners for this research subject.
Keywords: Social robots in nature, HRI theories, HRI computer modeling, HRI Longitudinal, HRI of large group, HRI in health care and special education, emotions and ethical in HRI
Quote: Park CH, Ros R, Kwak SS, Huang CM and Lemaignan S (2020) Editorial: towards the real world Impacts: design, development and deployment of social robots in nature. In front. Robot. IA 7: 600830. DOI: 10.3389 / Frobt .2020.600830
Received: August 31, 2020; Accepted: November 11, 2020;
Posted: December 03, 2020.
Edited and examined by: Alessandra SciuttiItalian Institute of Technology (IIT), Italy
Copyright © 2020 Park, Ros, Kwak, Huang and Lemaignan. This is an article in free access distributed under the terms of the Creative commons attribution license (CC by). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is authorized, provided that the authors of origin and the copyright (s) are credited and that the original publication in this review is cited, in accordance with Academic practice accepted. No use, distribution or reproduction is authorized which does not respect these terms.
*Correspondence: Chung Hyuk Park, Y2HWYXJRQGD3DS5LZHU =