CHALLENGES OF HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION IN EXTREME AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS (CEHE 2019)

There are many challenges mostly associated with intelligence and autonomy of robotic technology in extreme and hazardous environments, such as nuclear inspection and decommissioning, offshore energy and maintenance, space exploration and deep mining, search and rescue. In many cases, the operator must remotely operate robots from a far using limited visual feedback due to the hazardous nature of the environment for human entry. For such applications in harsh environments, interactions with robots are difficult to model due to reasons such as dynamics, uncertainty, complexity and unpredictability. Therefore the workshop primarily seeks to increase communication and knowledge sharing in regards to these challenges. Similarly through this workshop, we aim to better understand the limitations and benefits of different interaction scenarios, when robotic are subjected to extreme and harsh environments. Topics: - Trust in Human – Robot Interaction - Human factors for using robotic devices in extreme environments. - Language and non-verbal communication with Robotic solution - Cognitive architecture for variable autonomy - Visualisation tools and AI - Deep learning for HRI - Human-robot interfaces for remotely operating robots in extreme environments, including AR/VR/MxR immersive technologies. - Safe switching between levels of autonomy for human-in-the-loop tele-operation.