Reframing HRI education

Abstract

Over the last few years, technological developments in semi-autonomous machines have raised awareness about the strategic importance of human-robot interaction (HRI) and its technical and social implications. At the same time, HRI still lacks an established pedagogic tradition in the coordination of its intrinsically interdisciplinary nature. This scenario presents steep and urgent challenges for HRI education. Our contribution presents a normative interdisciplinary dialogic framework for HRI education, denoted InDia wheel, aimed toward seamless and coherent integration of the variety of disciplines that contribute to HRI. Our framework deemphasizes technical mastery, reducing it to a necessary yet not sufficient condition for HRI design, thus modifying the stereotypical narration of HRI-relevant disciplines and creating favorable conditions for a more diverse participation of students. Prospectively, we argue, the design of an educational 'space of interaction' that focuses on a variety of voices, without giving supremacy to one over the other, will be key to successful HRI education and practice.