Human-Robot Interaction – Best practices and methods

This topic group will function as a single point of contact to discuss, develop and disseminate best practices and requirements for conducting meaningful human-robot interaction (HRI) research. We aim at mapping HRI research within the UK and providing guidance for emerging researchers in the associated fields of HRI, as well as establishing a baseline methodology that ensures the involvement of relevant user groups and supports reproducibility in HRI.

For that, our steering group will meet regularly online and liaise on behalf of UK-RAS with entities that facilitate patient-participant involvement and standardising bodies. For the benefit of emerging researchers, we will establish and grow the “HRI Mentorship and Advisory Committee”, a network of national experts to act as mentors. Moreover, we will host a professionally produced seminar series on best practices inviting internationally leading HRI researchers.

The topic group will promote the importance of consistent methodologies and thereby help members of the UK-RAS community to find, access, understand, and adopt ethical norms, rigorous standards, and recommended practices for HRI-relevant topics. We will provide expertise in the conduction of HRI experimentation, including how to (co-)design, recruit for and conduct human subject studies, perform the statistical evaluation, and report experimental results.