Editorial Introduction to ACM THRI Volume 8, Issue 2
Our second issue of ACM THRI this year brings together another collection of insightful and thoughtful articles pushing the boundaries of thought in Human-Robot Interaction. Furthering ideas at the meeting of HRI and artificial intelligence, our first article, from Heard et al., presents a human workload assessment algorithm to enable dynamic task allocation that improves the collective performance of human-robot teams. Stefanov et al. use artificial neural networks for the generation of robot gaze directions in dialogues including multiple individuals that analyze human behavior across combinations of movement and speech signals. The middle section of this issue focuses on the perspectives of older adults and their acceptance of robotic technology. Yeh et al. deliver findings that that can improve acceptance of robots through establishing personal relevance, even though such populations tend to have more negative initial reactions to robots. Jung and Ludden explored the potential for robotic exoskeletons to be accepted by older adults as viable mobility aids, yielding insights that will be important for the design of usable devices with this technology. The