New research focused on people interacting with urban robots
Robots making deliveries are no longer a future idea. In some places – including a two-year pilot on the UIC campus – robots are already being used to deliver food.
A big question about implementing the technology is how people walking, running, and riding bikes or scooters react to the robots in the public way.
At UIC, Assistant Professor Hyungil Kim is investigating this question with a grant titled “Ride Feedback in Hybrid Mobility” from the Honda Research Institute USA, Inc.
“This technology is in its early phase now, and they want us to study how people would interact with future urban street robots,” said Kim, the director of the Human-Centered Engineering Lab..
Kim’s research background is in human factors engineering, which is about making technology work for people. He is interested in understanding how people interact with emerging technologies when they are unfamiliar with them. Some technologies include virtual reality, augmented reality, intelligent transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence focusing on industrial applications.
“Sometimes, engineers don’t think about the actual users of the technology. We are interested in not only the advancing the technology, but also something more important behind the technology – humans,” he said. “We study how the human body and mind work, and based on this knowledge, we try to design or develop technology that works better for people.”
The research with Honda is a proof-of-concept study, and without the actual technology in the streets, Kim and his team need to be creative to find the answers they seek.
“We decided to develop a virtual environment where we can put any type of future technology on the streets,” he said. “We will invite people to participate in the virtual environment and ask them to interact with future technology while acting as various road users such as pedestrians, bikers, or e-scooter riders. That way, we can study how people feel or interact with the technology and, more importantly, prepare for future hybrid mobility societies where people may mingle with various forms of artificial agents in public environments.”
For now, the virtual environment will not replicate an existing city. It will be simple urban streets based on the available resources from the virtual reality community.
“At some point in the future, we may model the Downtown Chicago area to give our participant a more realistic experience,” he said.
The research team expects this proof-of-concept study to generate future collaborations across interdisciplinary research groups at the UIC, such as Autonomous Vehicles Working Group and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory.