The course is about physical robots used in applications with close interaction between robots and humans. The focus is on design considerations, software development, and evaluation of such applications.
The course is divided into a theoretical part (Part 1: Theory, 4 hp) and a practical part (Part 2: Practice, 3.5 credits). The theoretical part deals with current issues, established practices, and methods used to design, construct, and evaluate systems of interacting robots and humans. The theoretical part also provides exercises in applying this knowledge. Examples of concepts that are typically included in this part is autonomy, user-centered design, embodiment, anthropomorphism, emotions, design patterns, proxemics, deictic gestures, and natural language processing.
The practical part runs in parallel with the theoretical one, and mainly consists of project work in groups. Theories, methods and techniques from the theoretical part are applied in order to design and develop software for robots that interact with humans. Practical work with critical evaluation of such robots are also included.
