Editorial on Advancing Human–Robot Interaction: Empirical Insights and Innovative Applications

Abstract

This special issue focuses on topics related to human–robot interaction, with particular interest in empirical results. The proposed robotic fields include a wide variety of applications where human–robot interaction becomes a fundamental factor, such as wearable robots, collaborative and cooperative robots, social robots, teleoperated robots, and haptics. The main research interests include system development and evaluation, design principles, methodologies, ethics, user experience, and user-centered design. A total of four articles have been published, touching different areas, technologies, and application fields.

The field of robotics is advancing at an unprecedented pace, with robots becoming increasingly integrated into various aspects of our lives. As robots transition from isolated machines to interactive entities, there is a growing need to explore and understand the complex dynamics of human–robot interaction. This is particularly critical in scenarios where the robot is working close together with a person, such as assistive robots for rehabilitation and industrial applications, collaborative robots, surgical robots, teleoperation, and service robots.

Four articles are published in this special session, including three research articles and one brief report.

The first article by Vazquez-Garcia et al. regards the study and evaluation of a novel soft-haptic system, and the complexities of the human–robot interaction in this context, such as morphology, interaction forces, compliance, and perception. From the technical point of view, the authors implement a nonlinear controller and evaluate the system with 10 subjects, advancing in the understanding of soft-haptic systems and their interaction with the users.

The second article by Onishi et al. regards a different topic purely related with the study of the relationship between the users and the robots, but applying human–animal social bonds concepts. While some robots are created in a way that they look like well-known living creatures, in appearance and behavior, some other systems are further away from this animal likeness. The authors take as subject of study a drone device and study the social bonds of the users while applying animal-like behaviors.

The third article by Vandeputte et al. is a brief report focused on the study of nonverbal communication between a hexapod robot and the users using dynamic lighting. The trials indicated that the light signals can not only induce informative information to the user, but they can also lead to discomfort. This is an important phenomenon that can be beneficial for the development and study of future human-robot interactions using light interfaces.

The fourth and final article by Angelopoulos et al. considers a collaborative robot scenario with a shared task of soft object manipulation. In particular, the focus task of this work is the folding of fabric. The main technical contribution of this work is on the tracking of the soft object using an RGB-D camera. The proposed collaborative system is tested on a real scenario for the evaluation of the assistance provided by the collaborative robot.