HRI and pathetic robots

Robots are an essential part of the industrial production chain. Robots have been around and populating factories for over five decades. They shine for their robustness, speed and tireless precision. They operate in environments specially designed for them, from which humans are totally excluded. A far cry from these industrial robots are the android robots, or cyborgs –, so widely sold, vaunted and feared in science-fiction stories, which almost everyone fantasizes about because of their perfection, their perfect mimicry of humans without biological defects, and their apparent immortality – are still only a rough draft away from what we imagine. Cyborgs do exist in some research laboratories, but they are far from being perfect reproductions of humans . Each of their appearances is often highly publicized, but in the end, they have little or no presence, whether at work, at home or elsewhere in our daily lives. These two large families of robots, industrial and android, are not the only ones: over the last twenty years, there has also been a whole family of robots much closer to us, whether we are aware of it or not. It's these robots that we're going to focus on in this article, and more specifically those commonly referred to as "social" robots: even if this term isn't so well chosen, it's the one most commonly used in the field, whereas "companion robot" or "presence robot" might be better names, which are the ones adopted here.

What do these pet robots do, and why are they so important to our society, now and in the future? How are they made, and what are the possible benefits and dangers of such machines? That's what we'll be looking at in detail in this article, starting with the robots that surround us. We'll then look at the importance and role of design in the process of creating these robots, presenting the major current trends. Then we'll explain the importance of social and psychological factors in interaction robotics. We'll discuss how experiments in this field are generally conducted and the challenges they raise, before concluding with a look at the future of interaction robotics.