Five Robotic Applications Designed to Help Humans and Society - ASME

Self-driving vehicles, small robots on production lines, drones flying rescue missions, even robots that keep older people company: these are some of the proposed, not-so futuristic, ways robots will aid us. But all those scenarios won't be possible without trust. Humans need to feel secure enough around robots and robotic systems to rely on them. "Building human-robot trust into autonomous robotic systems like self-driving vehicles is key to the systems' success," said Ryan Williams, a Virginia Tech assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. "As we readily observe in human teams, collaboration without trust is often ineffective or even counterproductive," he said.