Ethorobotics is a field where biologists who focus on animal and human behaviour, computer scientists, and engineers collaborate to figure out how we robots can be better at communicating and cooperating with humans. Unfortunately, we don’t instinctively know what’s polite or what might be scary or bothersome to people. Researchers in ethorobotics try to unravel these questions and shape them into forms of behaviour that robots can use. However, it’s not as simple as just mimicking human behaviour – far from it! My researcher friends believe that copying humans isn’t the right path; instead, they want us to forge our own way.
