This year's conference focuses on human-robot interaction in the real world. The panel discussion presents the view from those who are "living it": industry leaders who are relying on current robotic technology to accomplish their work right now. Who better to provide the most compelling information on issues/challenges that are influencing their use? This panel gathers experts from business and industry to discuss their experiences in using robotic technology in their field. Topics include the financial, organizational, and practical challenges faced by professionals using robotic technology in the workplace, and factors influencing the acceptance of robots at work. The implications for design of robotic products and systems are also discussed. The session is a must for professionals and academic researchers interested in solving problems related to using robots in real world settings.

A crew organization and four-step operational protocol is recommended based on a cumulative descriptive field study of teleoperated rotary-wing micro air vehicles (MAV) used for structural inspection during the response and recovery phases of Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. The use of MAVs for real civilian missions in real operating environments provides a unique opportunity to consider human-robot interaction. The analysis of the human-robot interaction during 8 days, 14 missions, and 38 flights finds that a three person crew is currently needed to perform distinct roles: Pilot, Mission Specialist, and Flight Director. The general operations procedure is driven by the need for safety of bystanders, other aircraft, the tactical team, and the MAV itself, which leads to missions being executed as a series of short, line-of-sight flights rather than a single flight. Safety concerns may limit the utility of autonomy in reducing the crew size or enabling beyond line-of-sight-operations but autonomy could lead to an increase in flights per mission and reduced Pilot training demands. This paper is expected to contribute to set a foundation for future research in HRI and MAV autonomy and to help establish regulations and acquisition guidelines for civilian operations. Additional research in autonomy, interfaces, attention, and out-of-the-loop (OOTL) control is warranted.

This paper presents the results from experiments validating the physics and environmental accuracy of a new robot simulation environment, the search and rescue game environment (SARGE), which is the foundation for series of robot-operator training games. An ATRV-Jr. outfitted with a SICK laser, GPS, and compass was used both in the real-world and in a simulated environment modeled after the real-world testing location in a simulated anomaly detection task. The ARTV-Jr., controlled by the Distributed Field Robotics Architecture, navigated through a series of waypoints in the environment. The simulated ATRV-Jr. matched the actions of the real ATRV-Jr. in both velocity and path similarity within 0.08 m/s and 0.7 m respectively.

This study presents mobile robots as a way of augmenting communication in distributed teams through a remote shared visual presence (RSVP) consisting of the robot's view. By giving all team members access to the shared visual display provided by a robot situated in a remote workspace, the robot can serve as a source of common ground for the distributed team. In a field study examining the effects of remote shared visual presence on team performance in collocated and distributed Urban Search & Rescue technical search teams, data were collected from 25 dyadic teams comprised of US&R task force personnel drawn from high-fidelity training exercises held in California (2004) and New Jersey (2005). They performed a 2 x 2 repeated measures search task entailing robot-assisted search in a confined space rubble pile. Multilevel regression analyses were used to predict team performance based upon use of RSVP (RSVP or no-RSVP) and whether or not team members had visual access to other team members. Results indicated that the use of RSVP technology predicted team performance ( ß= -1.24, p<.05). No significant differences emerged in performance between teams with and without visual access to their team members. Findings suggest RSVP may enable distributed teams to perform as effectively as collocated teams. However, differences detected between sites suggest efficiency of RSVP may depend on the user's domain experience and team cohesion.

This report presents a survey of computer based simulators for unmanned vehicles. The simulators examined cover a wide spectrum of vehicles including unmanned aerial vehicles, both full scale and micro size; unmanned surface and subsurface vehicles; and unmanned ground vehicles. The majority of simulators use simple numerical simulation and simplistic visualization using custom OpenGL code. An emerging trend is to used modified commercial game engines for physical simulation and visualization. The game engines that are commercially available today are capable of physical simulations providing basic physical properties and interactions between objects. Newer and/or specialized engines such as the flight simulator X-Plane or Ageia PhysX and Havok physics engines, are capable of simulating more complex physical interactions between objects. Researchers in need of a simulator have a choice of using game engines or available open source and commercially available simulators, allowing resources to be focused on research instead of building a new simulator. We conclude that it is no longer necessary to build a new simulator from scratch.

This paper reviews the literature related to the use of psychophysiology measures in human-robot interaction (HRI) studies in an effort to address the fundamental question of appropriate metrics and methodologies for evaluating HRI research, especially affect. It identifies four main methods of evaluation in HRI studies: (1) self-report measures, (2) behavioral measures, (3) psychophysiology measures, and (4) task performance. However, the paper also shows that using only one of these measures for evaluation is insufficient to provide a complete evaluation and interpretation of the interactions between a robot and the human with which it is interacting. In addition, the paper describes exemplar HRI studies which use psychophysiological measures; these implementations fall into three categories: detection and/or identification of specific emotions of participants from physiological signals, evaluation of participants' responses to a robot through physiological signals, and development and implementation of real-time control and modification of robot behaviors using physiological signals. Two open research questions on psychophysiological metrics were identified as a result of this review.

Humanoids are the most advanced robots and have been expected to act in various fields including education. Thus, it is important to investigate in different cultures what people actually assume when they encounter the word "humanoid robots," from not only a psychological perspective but also an engineering one, focusing on such aspects as design and market of robotics. For this aim, a cross-cultural research instrument, the robot assumptions questionnaire (RAQ) was administered to university students in Japan, Korea, and the USA. As a result, it was found that the Japanese students more strongly assume autonomy, social relationships, and emotional capacity of humanoid robots than the Korean and USA students, and there are more detailed cultural differences of assumptions about humanoids related to daily-life fields, in particular, pedagogical fields. Moreover, it was found that the USA students have more ambivalent images of humanoids than the Japanese students, and the Korean students have more careful attitudes toward humanoid robots than the Japanese students. In addition, the paper discusses engineering implications of the research results.

In a meta-analysis of 43 studies, we examined the effects of multimodal feedback on user performance, comparing visual-auditory and visual-tactile feedback to visual feedback alone. Results indicate that adding an additional modality to visual feedback improves performance overall. Both visual-auditory feedback and visual-tactile feedback provided advantages in reducing reaction times and improving performance scores, but were not effective in reducing error rates. Effects are moderated by task type, workload, and number of tasks. Visual-auditory feedback is most effective when a single task is being performed (g = .87), and under normal workload conditions (g = .71). Visual-tactile feedback is more effective when multiple tasks are begin performed (g = .77) and workload conditions are high (g = .84). Both types of multimodal feedback are effective for target acquisition tasks; but vary in effectiveness for other task types. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

Information display systems have become increasingly complex and more difficult for human cognition to process effectively. Based upon Wicken's Multiple Resource Theory (MRT), information delivered using multiple modalities (i.e., visual and tactile) could be more effective than communicating the same information through a single modality. The purpose of this meta-analysis is to compare user effectiveness when using visual-tactile task feedback (a multimodality) to using only visual task feedback (a single modality). Results indicate that using visual-tactile feedback enhances task effectiveness more so than visual feedback (g = .38). When assessing different criteria, visual-tactile feedback is particularly effective at reducing reaction time (g = .631) and increasing performance (g = .618). Follow up moderator analyses indicate that visual-tactile feedback is more effective when workload is high (g = .844) and multiple tasks are being performed (g = .767). Implications of results are discussed in the paper.

As part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/National Science Foundation study on human-robot interaction (HRI), over sixty representatives from academia, government, and industry participated in an interdisciplinary workshop, which allowed roboticists to interact with psychologists, sociologists, cognitive scientists, communication experts and human-computer interaction specialists to discuss common interests in the field of HRI, and to establish a dialogue across the disciplines for future collaborations. We include initial work that was done in preparation for the workshop, links to keynote and other presentations, and a summary of the findings, outcomes, and recommendations that were generated by the participants. Findings of the study include-the need for more extensive interdisciplinary interaction, identification of basic taxonomies and research issues, social informatics, establishment of a small number of common application domains, and field experience for members of the HRI community. An overall conclusion of the workshop was expressed as the following-HRI is a cross-disciplinary area, which poses barriers to meaningful research, synthesis, and technology transfer. The vocabularies, experiences, methodologies, and metrics of the communities are sufficiently different that cross-disciplinary research is unlikely to happen without sustained funding and an infrastructure to establish a new HRI community.