Communicating with Robots and Bots

Although there are some robots you might never get to meet (or might hope you never meet), such as those sent to space, war or rescue situations, many other robots and bots are being developed to populate people's homes, the online spaces they frequent, their workplaces, and the social spaces they visit. This course explores how people communicate with robots and bots in everyday life, both now and into the future. Module 1 discusses the difficulties of defining what a robot is, as well as briefly introducing bots. Module 2 focuses on bots, chatbots and socialbots in detail, to consider how people communicate with these programs in online spaces, as well as some ethical questions these interactions raise. Robots in the home are the subject of Module 3, with a discussion of robots designed to act as personal assistants leading into some examples of assistive and care robots, as well as telepresence robots that allow people to interact with one another at a distance through a robot. Module 4 considers robots at work, from the potential of telepresence robots to enable remote operations, to robots designed to share people's workspaces, and potentially even take their jobs. One example of a public space where robots might alter people's working and social lives greatly is on the roads with the development of self-driving vehicles, robots that need to be able to communicate with their passengers as well as with other road users.