Diverse application domains show research and development activities on human-robot collaboration, e.g., for (1) reconnaissance and rescue actions in disaster responses, (2) education and guidance of children with a chronic condition like diabetes, or (3) assisting older adults with minor physical or mental handicaps. These efforts —with contributions from different disciplines, such as artificial intelligence, psychology, ergonomics and computer science— have provided a rich variety of robots that can act as a team-member or partner in a joint human-robot activity.

To foster the progress and application of such social robots, we developed a situated Cognitive Engineering method that supports the incremental, multi-disciplinary robot design and evaluation. This presentation will summarize our general, empirical and theoretical driven, research and development approach, and some example results from the healthcare and safety domain.