COMP 150-02 Human-Robot Interaction

This course will provide an overview of the up and coming field of human-robot interaction (HRI) which is located squarely in the intersection of psychology, human factors engineering, computer science, and robotics. HRI has become a major research focus recently with the NSF's National Robotics Initiative and the push countries around the globe to develop robots for various societal tasks, from new flexible and adaptive robots for industrial manufacturing, to socially assistive robots for eldercare. In this course, we will examine this field from an interdisciplinary perspective, reading key papers in HRI that intersect computer science, robotics, cognitive and social psychology (since there is no suitable textbook yet, all reading materials will be made available). Students will give short presentations on HRI studies and designs and work in interdisciplinary groups on a term project which will require them to design and conduct an HRI study.