Human-Centered AI and Autonomy in Robotics: Insights from a Bibliometric Study

The development of autonomous robotic systems offers significant potential for performing complex tasks with precision and consistency. Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have enabled more capable intelligent automation systems, addressing increasingly complex challenges. However, this progress raises questions about human roles in such systems. Human-Centered AI (HCAI) aims to balance human control and automation, ensuring performance enhancement while maintaining creativity, mastery, and responsibility. For real-world applications, autonomous robots must balance task performance with reliability, safety, and trustworthiness. Integrating HCAI principles enhances human-robot collaboration and ensures responsible operation. This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of intelligent autonomous robotic systems, utilizing SciMA T and VOSViewer to examine data from the Scopus database. These insights are then projected onto the IBM MAPE-K architecture, with the goal of identifying how these research results map into actual robotic autonomous systems development efforts for real-world scenarios. In recent decades, robotics has made significant advancements across various sectors, including aviation, transportation, marine, and agriculture. According to the European strategy proposed by euRobotics in December 2024 [1], robotics is a complex integration of technologies that offers functional, economic, and societal benefits.