Formalizing and guaranteeing human-robot interaction

Robot capabilities are maturing across domains, from self-driving cars to bipeds to drones. The growing field of human-robot interaction (HRI) studies various aspects of this scenario, ranging from social norms to collaborative manipulation to human-robot teaming. Researchers in HRI have made great efforts in developing models, methods, and algorithms for robots acting with and around humans. Demonstrating trustworthiness in various forms of automation through formal guarantees has been the focus of validation, verification, and synthesis efforts. Formalizing HRI can enable the creation of trustworthy systems and, just as importantly, support explicit reasoning about the context of guarantees.