National Science Foundation FW-HTF-P: Mitigating Risks in Future Police Work through Social Telerobotic
Communication
In law enforcement, the stress of emergency-response scenarios can impede proper interpretation of verbal messages and emotional states, leading to rapid judgements and potential miscommunications with life or death consequences that resonate throughout families, communities, and societies for years. To this end, robots have long provided safer alternatives to direct human activity in hazardous scenarios such as explosive ordinance disposal and surveillance. However, these are relatively special cases, and a much greater share of police work relies on interpersonal communication where achieving positive outcomes requires the development of mutual relationships, empathy, and trust. Unfortunately, modern remote technologies that place law enforcement officers (LEOs) out of harm’s way create situations where communication suffers from perceptions of physical and mental isolation. To address this need and protect the welfare of both officers and civilians in their encounters, a transdisciplinary team of investigators are developing a prototype teleoperated social robot to provide officers the ability to remotely communicate and interact with each other and the community across multiple verbal and non-verbal modes...
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