Researchers from MIT and Harvard suggest that applying theories from cognitive science and educational psychology to the area of human-robot interaction can help humans build more accurate mental models of their robot collaborators, which could boost performance and improve safety in cooperative workspaces. Scientists who study human-robot interaction often focus on understanding human intentions from a robot's perspective, so the robot learns to cooperate with people more effectively. But human-robot interaction is a two-way street, and the human also needs to learn how the robot behaves. Thanks to decades of cognitive science and educational psychology research, scientists have a pretty good handle on how humans learn new concepts. So, researchers at MIT and Harvard University collaborated to apply well-established theories of human concept learning to challenges in human-robot interaction.

I received my copy today and instantly decided I would be using it in several of the courses I teach for pre-service teachers. They have been asking for a book like this for years, but the existing books were aimed at the wrong audience, had content that was oversimplified (or overly complex), or failed to incorporate important current research. Dr. Fredricks' book masterfully incorporates the most relevant research with perfect tone and an engaging narrative. There's no way I'll be assigning a 100 textbook when this new book does so much more at less than a third the price.