The Secret Life of Robots: Perspectives and Challenges for Robot’s Behaviours During Non-interactive Tasks

Some applications of service robots within domestic and working environments are envisaged to be a significant part of our lives in the not too distant future. They are developed to autonomously accomplish different tasks either on behalf of or in collaboration with a human being. Robots can perceive and interpret data from the external environment, so they also collect personal information and habits; they can plan, navigate, and manipulate objects, eventually intruding in our personal space and disturbing us in the current activities. Indeed, such capabilities need to be socially enhanced to ensure their effective deployment and to favour a significant social impact. The modelling and evaluation of a service robot’s behaviour, while not interacting with a human, have only been marginally considered in the last few years. But these can be expected to play a key role in developing socially acceptable robotic applications that can be used widely. To explore this research direction, we present research objectives related to the effective development of socially-aware service robots that are not involved in tasks that require explicit interaction with a person. Such discussion aims at highlighting some of the future challenges that will be posed for the social robotics community in the next years.