How should machines- robots, computers agents and automated vehicles behave near humans, such that an interacting human is comfortable with them, trust them, feels safe with them, and is willing to coexist with them?
The answer to this questions is not trivial because human interactions, both with their environment and other humans, have complex dynamics that change not only with an interacting individual’s physiology, age and pathology, but also emotional factors like fear and anxiety, and cognitive factors like the Theory of Mind.
The reason we can intuitively interact with a fellow human is because we understand his/her behaviour in all these aspects and respond accordingly, and correspondingly he/she does the same.
I am a Directeur de Recherche (DR) with CNRS and using integrated research in Neuroscience and Robotics, I aim to endow robots, and machine in general, with similar capabilities to understand humans through the development of Human Centric Robotics… read more
Ganesh Gowrishankar