Human Robot Interaction Lab

The Human Robot Interaction lab is a strategic research initiative at Aalborg University, Denmark aiming at creating synergies between all departments that are working on Human Robot Interaction with different disciplinary perspectives. To this end we have defined a research strategy "From Reactive to Proactive Robots" that will focus on different challenges if robots are envisioned to work side by side with humans in dynamic environments both in production contexts but also in societal context like health care, education, or commerce. This will require robots to become socially accepted, to become able to analyze human intentions in meaningful ways, and to become proactive. Being proactive and thus (partly) autonomous requires new methods for intention recognition and the pursuit of common goals that are relevant in the given context in order to maximize task success. Our mission is to establish an interdisciplinary and cross-departmental research group around these topics. This will be achieved by defining cross-departmental PhD projects in order to integrate perspectives from design, interaction and control. While being a faculty initiative at the moment, we are open to collaborate across the university and welcome associated partners.