Living with Robots: Emerging Issues on the Psychological and Social Implications of Robotics

Living with Robots: Emerging Issues on the Psychological and Social Implications of Robotics focuses on the issues that come to bear when humans interact and collaborate with robots. The book dives deeply into critical factors that impact how individuals interact with robots at home, work and play. It includes topics ranging from robot anthropomorphic design, degree of autonomy, trust, individual differences and machine learning. While other books focus on engineering capabilities or the highly conceptual, philosophical issues of human-robot interaction, this resource tackles the human elements at play in these interactions, which are essential if humans and robots are to coexist and collaborate effectively.

Authored by key psychology robotics researchers, the book limits its focus to specifically those robots who are intended to interact with people, including technology such as drones, self-driving cars, and humanoid robots. Forward-looking, the book examines robots not as the novelty they used to be, but rather the practical idea of robots participating in our everyday lives.

• Explores how individual differences in cognitive abilities and personality influence human-robot interaction
• Examines the human response to robot autonomy
• Includes tools and methods for the measurement of social emotion with robots
• Delves into a broad range of domains - military, caregiving, toys, surgery, and more
• Anticipates the issues we will encountering with robots in the next ten years
• Foreword by Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted

Richard Pak is Associate Professor at Clemson University Department of Psychology. His research looks at how age-related changes in cognition affect people’s ability to use technology. He is the lab director of the Cognition, Aging, and Technology Lab at Clemson. He is author of the book Designing Displays for Older Adults (2010) and co-edits the Human Factors Blog (http://humanfactorsblog.org/).

Ewart J. de Visser is a senior human factors Scientist and director of human factors and UX research at Perceptronics Solutions Inc. He is the head of the TRUMAN Lab where he oversees studies on trust and automation.

Ericka Rovira is an Associate Professor in the Engineering Psychology Program, United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. Her current research interest lies in human automation interaction in complex domains. Specifically, her expertise lies in designing information and decision support tools taking into account the cognitive capabilities and limitations of human operators in complex environments.