Evaluation of COTS Simulations for Future HRI Teams

As robotic technologies become more autonomous, the way human-robot interaction is studied in the laboratory is going to need to change. Currently, the use of robots in the present day is almost entirely via tele-operation. As robots become more intelligent, they will need less human supervisory control. One approach is to liken near future human-robot teams to working human-animal teams However, in order to fully understand how humans will interact with near future robotic technologies that may not yet exist, we must use today’s simulation technologies as research tools. Some of these include Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) games. To overcome some of the problems inherent in trying to simulate technologies that may not yet exist, these games can represent a means by which near future human-robot interactions can be simulated This paper serves as a review the development of a framework for analyzing the utility of COTS games for HRI research, and will apply the framework to a few current COTS games.