Robots are machines that can sense the environment and use that information to perform an action. You can find them nearly everywhere in industrialized societies today. There are household robots that vacuum floors and warehouse robots that pack and ship goods. Lab robots test hundreds of clinical samples a day. Education robots support teachers by acting as one-on-one tutors, assistants and discussion facilitators. And medical robotics composed of prosthetic limbs can enable someone to grasp and pick up objects with their thoughts.

Figuring out how humans and robots can collaborate to effectively carry out tasks together is a rapidly growing area of interest to the scientists and engineers that design robots as well as the people who will use them. For successful collaboration between humans and robots, communication is key.

How people communicate with robots

Robots were originally designed to undertake repetitive and mundane tasks and operate exclusively in robot-only zones like factories. Robots have since advanced to work collaboratively with people with new ways to communicate with each other.

Cooperative control is one way to transmit information and messages between a robot and a person. It involves combining human abilities and decision making with robot speed, accuracy and strength to accomplish a task.

For example, robots in the agriculture industry can help farmers monitor and harvest crops. A human can control a semi-autonomous vineyard sprayer through a user interface, as opposed to manually spraying their crops or broadly spraying the entire field and risking pesticide overuse.

Robots can also support patients in physical therapy. Patients who had a stroke or spinal cord injury can use robots to practice hand grasping and assisted walking during rehabilitation.

Another form of communication, emotional intelligence perception, involves developing robots that adapt their behaviors based on social interactions with humans. In this approach, the robot detects a person's emotions when collaborating on a task, assesses their satisfaction, then modifies and improves its execution based on this feedback.

For example, if the robot detects that a physical therapy patient is dissatisfied with a specific rehabilitation activity, it could direct the patient to an alternate activity. Facial expression and body gesture recognition ability are important design considerations for this approach. Recent advances in machine learning can help robots decipher emotional body language and better interact with and perceive humans.

Robots in rehab

Questions like how to make robotic limbs feel more natural and capable of more complex functions like typing and playing musical instruments have yet to be answered.

I am an electrical engineer who studies how the brain controls and communicates with other parts of the body, and my lab investigates in particular how the brain and hand coordinate signals between each other. Our goal is to design technologies like prosthetic and wearable robotic exoskeleton devices that could help improve function for individuals with stroke, spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries.

One approach is through brain-computer interfaces, which use brain signals to communicate between robots and humans. By accessing an individual's brain signals and providing targeted feedback, this technology can potentially improve recovery time in stroke rehabilitation. Brain-computer interfaces may also help restore some communication abilities and physical manipulation of the environment for patients with motor neuron disorders.

The future of human-robot interaction

Effective integration of robots into human life requires balancing responsibility between people and robots, and designating clear roles for both in different environments.

As robots are increasingly working hand in hand with people, the ethical questions and challenges they pose cannot be ignored. Concerns surrounding privacy, bias and discrimination, security risks and robot morality need to be seriously investigated in order to create a more comfortable, safer and trustworthy world with robots for everyone. Scientists and engineers studying the "dark side" of human-robot interaction are developing guidelines to identify and prevent negative outcomes.

Human-robot interaction has the potential to affect every aspect of daily life. It is the collective responsibility of both the designers and the users to create a human-robot ecosystem that is safe and satisfactory for all.

A photo was replaced to more accurately reflect the work of the author.

Ramana Vinjamuri, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article or a version in UMBC Magazine.

Fellow Profiles

Jahir Antonio Batista Andrade

How did you become interested in STEM topics?

I grew up in Panama, in a family of very modest means, and while I very much wanted to learn to swim, there was no money for lessons. I decided to teach myself, in a small stream near our home. I practiced swimming, and my siblings sometimes caught fish and crayfish my mother could prepare for our dinners.

When a neighbor upstream began farming, he allowed untreated animal waste to enter the stream, so that it was no longer possible to swim in it or eat the fish from it. That sparked my interest in chemistry and environmental engineering at a young age.

Describe your academic journey and research up until now.

I earned a B.S. in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Panama thanks to a government scholarship; I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. After being out in the work world as a lab technician for a while, I started a master's degree program in Environmental Chemistry at the Federal University of Rio Grande, in Brazil. Upon my return to Panama, I applied successfully to the Fulbright Foreign program for Ph.D. study in the U.S. Thanks to that, I embarked upon a doctoral program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and in July of 2023, I expect to earn my Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering. 

My dissertation is titled “Identifying Wastewater Inputs to Urban Streams by Monitoring Dissolved Organic Matter Fluorescence and Contaminants of Emerging Concerns.” In lay terms what that means is taking a chemical approach to identifying pollutants. If, for example, you test spring water and it shows the same chemical signatures for things that can be found in nearby sewage water, like artificial sweeteners, hormones, or antibiotics, then we can pinpoint and mitigate those contaminants. With sewer infrastructure in the U.S. aging rapidly, that’s very important, and work like mine could even affect public policy one day. 

How do you feel about participating in the Faculty First Look program?

This has been a great year for me: I started it with a new journal publication and accepted talks at American Chemical Society and Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors conferences; I won a 2023 Graduate Student Award  from the American Chemical Society; and I was chosen to take part in Faculty First Look. 

I hope to get feedback on my work from faculty members at NYU Tandon who I know are focused on water-related issues and sustainability-focused research issues.  Because the program also encompasses writing help, I’d like to work on my vision statement too; I have a definite vision, and I want to get it down in a succinct and compelling way.

What are your ultimate goals?

I taught back in Panama and loved it, so ultimately I’d like to divide my time between the lab, doing socially beneficial research with practical application, and the classroom. I identify as both Latino and a member of the LGBTQ community, and I think it’s important for students from underrepresented groups to see themselves represented in their school’s faculty.

Hui Chen

How did you become interested in STEM topics? 

My father ran a business that involved filtration systems, and I had always been good at science and math, so when I entered Nanjing Normal University, in my native China, I opted to study chemistry. After earning my undergraduate degree in 2016, I had to carefully consider what my next steps would be, and I decided that I wanted to come to the U.S. I’m am only child, and I knew my parents would be upset at the prospect of me living that far away, but once I was accepted to various programs, I was determined to go. As I expected, they were not fully happy about my decision to attend Stony Brook, but they eventually came around, and they’re very proud of me now. I earned my Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2021 and have since written several papers and given multiple conference presentations. 

Describe your academic journey and research up until now.

I’m currently a post-doctoral research assistant at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where I study the possibilities of recovering nutrients from urine using a tubular membrane reactor. I’m also working on a USDA-funded project aimed at efficient nutrient recovery from animal manure using hollow-fiber ion exchange membranes. 

How do you feel about participating in the Faculty First Look program?

At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, I work in the lab run by Professor Lee Blaney, whose focus is on the intersection of fundamental and applied aspects of analytical, environmental, inorganic, organic, and toxicological chemistry. A few of us in the lab applied to Faculty First Look–unbeknowst to the others. It seemed so lucky when we all got accepted, and I know Professor Blaney feels very proud of all of us. I hope to learn more about the different stages of the job application process, from writing statements to giving a compelling job talk. 

What are your ultimate goals?

I was a teaching assistant at Stony Brook, and I’ve lectured in Baltimore County, and I love that aspect of being in academia, I;ve mentored about a dozen students during my journey so far, from high school students exploring STEM to Ph.D. candidates. My ideal job would encompass teaching, mentoring, and research.

Michael Fleming