Culture-Aware Robotics (CARs)

Culture is not the first aspect that comes to mind when discussing human robot interaction. But our cultural upbringing does to a large degree influence our patterns of behavior and interpretation. Thus, culture is present in the development of robotic systems right from the start, unconsciously influencing how robots look, what we envision with them to do, and how they are programmed to interact with the user. The area of culturally aware robotics is currently emerging as a subfield in the HRI community, which can be seen in the increasing number of publications related to this topic. This becomes increasingly important when robots start to move into the users’ environment, fulfilling tasks that have so far been viewed as “human” tasks. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.Information Systems: H.5 Information Interfaces and Prsentation (I.7): H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6) General Terms Design, Experimentation, Human Factors.