Toward Designing Social Human-Robot Interactions for Deep Space Exploration
This addresses the challenge of maintaining crew well-being and team cohesion during long-duration space missions, but it is incremental as it builds on existing Earth applications.
The paper tackles the problem of designing social human-robot interactions to improve interpersonal communications and team dynamics in deep space exploration, proposing novel research questions based on Earth-based evidence of robots providing companionship and enhancing performance.
In planning for future human space exploration, it is important to consider how to design for uplifting interpersonal communications and social dynamics among crew members. What if embodied social robots could help to improve the overall team interaction experience in space? On Earth, social robots have been shown effective in providing companionship, relieving stress and anxiety, fostering connection among people, enhancing team performance, and mediating conflicts in human groups. In this paper, we introduce a set of novel research questions exploring social human-robot interactions in long-duration space exploration missions.