Hybrid Societies - Humans Interacting with Embodied Technologies, Volume 1

The open access book gives an overview of novel research findings in the field of humans interaction with embodied technologies. It provides a deep understanding of technologies, scientific methods, and studies on human's interaction with embodied technologies, such as digital agents, robots, cars, and machines. Autonomously acting EDTs and humans in real or virtual shared environments, and humans wearing EDTs or controlling artificial bodies, form hybrid societies. In hybrid societies, humans and agents with embodied technologies must coordinate efficiently and smoothly. To this aim, they must perceive and track each other's behavior, assess each other's capabilities, states, and situational intentions to make predictions, communicate implicitly and explicitly, and plan and control movements. The interactions begin at the individual encounter and human-machine interface level and extend to the level of entire sociotechnical systems involving joint activities of human and artificial agents.
Several upcoming embodied technologies that interact with humans in public environments are discussed, including highly automated and driverless vehicles mixed with human-driven vehicles and human road users, as well as urban robots. Innovative ways for recognizing, analyzing, and harmonizing both of the human capabilities and the technical functionalities of artificial agents are presented.