Human Factors Consideration for the Design of Collaborative Machine Assistants

Recent improvements in technology have facilitated the use of robots and virtual humans not only in entertainment and engineering but also in the military (Hill et al., 2003), healthcare (Pollack et al., 2002), and education domains (Johnson, Rickel, & Lester, 2000). As active partners of humans, such machine assistants can take the form of a robot or a graphical representation and serve the role of a financial assistant, a health manager, or even a social partner. As a result, interactive technologies are becoming an integral component of people’s everyday lives. Developing useful and usable assistants in everyday situations requires an interdisciplinary approach involving engineering, computer science, and psychology. Engineering fundamentals and skills to produce a functional system are important as well as mathematical foundations of computing such as computer architecture, algorithm theory, and embedded systems (Kitts & Quinn, 2004). Understanding the interaction with such systems also requires the scientific knowledge of mental processes and behavior of the users. Our perspective is from this psychology side, specifically, human factors psychology. The goal of this branch of psychology is a better understanding of user characteristics, attitudes, roles, and expectations of machine assistants. Characteristics such as perceived usefulness, ease of use, and complexity are critical to consider during the design given that in a pervasive ambi-