Human-Robot Interaction

What you'll learn

• Describe human-robot interaction by roles, proximity and levels of automation, and estimate fan-out from neglect and interaction times.
• Apply human factors models of attention, workload, situation awareness, pointing and error, and compute NASA-TLX scores and Fitts' law predictions.
• Design multimodal robot communication using speech, gesture, gaze, light, sound and motion, and distinguish legible from predictable motion.
• Explain the four collaborative methods and compute protective separation distances and power and force limiting checks, mapping CSA Z434 and ANSI/A3 R15.06 to ISO 10218:2025.
• Evaluate social and assistive robots using research on anthropomorphism, proxemics and novelty, and critically assess the uncanny valley hypothesis.
• Analyse teleoperation under time delay, the role of haptic feedback and camera-based situation awareness, and design shared autonomy with confidence-based arbitration.
• Explain trust calibration, misuse, disuse and automation bias, compute the positive predictive value of alarms, and apply technology acceptance models.
• Design HRI user studies with appropriate designs, counterbalancing, validated measures such as Godspeed, NASA-TLX and SUS, justified sample sizes and ethics review under TCPS 2 or the Common Rule.
• Analyse HRI data with paired tests, effect sizes, confidence intervals, Cohen's kappa and multiple-comparison corrections, and explain the causes of and remedies for the replication crisis.
• Apply universal and inclusive design, WCAG 2.2 and reach-range guidance to robot interfaces and bodies, and map accessibility law in Canada and the United States.
• Identify privacy risks of interactive robots, apply privacy by design, k-anonymity and differential privacy, map Canadian and US privacy law, and evaluate ethical and employment impacts.
• Design and plan the evaluation of a collaborative workstation or social robot interaction, from stakeholder and task analysis through risk assessment to a preregistration-ready study.