Socially Assitive Robots for Inclusion

Building socially assistive robots, that are respected by and represent people, is a very challenging task, requiring a cross-disciplinary research. Certainly, on the one hand it is essential to make effort for advancing the Socially Assistive Robotics field, with the aim of facilitating any user to exploit these devices. On the other hand, this technology, to be successful, has to satisfy people, not only from a technical (performance) point of view, but especially in terms of human-robot interaction. In this paper we present some challenges we have been facing to make the socially assistive robots a platform to guarantee new inclusion opportunities.