Of Robots, Humans, Bodies and Intelligence: Body Languages for Human Robot Interaction

Modern approaches to the design of robots with increasing amounts of embodied intelligence affect human-robot interaction paradigms. The physical structure of robots is evolving from traditional rigid, heavy industrial machines into soft bodies exhibiting new levels of versatility, adaptability, safety, elasticity, dynamism and energy efficiency. New challenges and opportunities arise for the control of soft robots: for instance, carefully planning for collision avoidance may no longer be a dominating concern, being on the contrary physical interaction with the environment not only allowed, but even desirable to solve complex tasks. To address these challenges, it is often useful to look at how humans use their own bodies in similar tasks, and even in some cases have a direct dialogue between the natural and artificial counterparts. ACM Classification B.0 General.