Discourse category for Human-Robot Interaction

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hi there!

Following the official launch of the open REP-155 aka ROS4HRI during ROSCon, I got multiple requests from interest parties to discuss new ideas/REP refinements/porting of existing nodes to ROS4HRI.

It seems to me that discourse.ros.org would be the right place to host those discussion – would it make sense to create a ‘ROS for Human-Robot Interaction’ category, to act as a hub?

Not sure who is responsible for creating new categories, though… @tfoote?

Thanks!
Severin

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I think that a category on ROS discourse likely makes sense.

This is the right place to propose that. In the proposal, the main thing to do is to confirm that a category versus using a tag is the right thing to do. To that end we want to generally demonstrate that this is a category that will have a critical mass and sustain community conversation on the topic.

We don’t have a formal process for proposing categories, but you can see some past discussions:

And we do have a semi-formalized way for creating new user groups which is a good releated process to consider paralleling.

I’d like to see a proposal of the About post for the category and others who express interest in being active contributors to the category.

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thanks for the feedback – got some more responses from the community since that first message, and multiple people has supported/asked for a shared community space for ROS4HRI.

Examples of on-going projects from the community that would benefit from a space to share/coordinate:

  • @fmrico has started to port ROS4HRI to ROS2
  • Bristol Robotics Lab is working on teaching material related to HRI and how ROS4HRI can be used
  • brainstorming during the IROS conference with ~10 colleagues about the “ROS4HRI Part 2” spec for the standardization of HRI-related actions/behaviours
  • several companies (incl. eg Intel, Microsoft, naverlabs) have shown interest in making their sensors ROS4HRI-compatible or using ROS4HRI on their robots

It seems to me that a sub-category would be the right ‘tool’ to conduct these discussions, and help the HRI community to find a good ‘landing’ point in the ROS world.

The ‘tag’ approach (eg, creating a ‘hri’ tag) might still be useful, though, also to identify and draw attention to topics that might not be primarily HRI-focused (and therefore published in a different category), but could benefit from input from the HRI community.

Proposal for the About post:

Welcome to the ‘ROS4HRI’ Discourse category! This is the place for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) practioners to discuss and collaborate around algorithms, APIs, tools and best practices to build human-aware robots, and ensure that ROS is a great platform to do so.

All topics related to ROS and Human-Robot Interaction(s) are welcome here, from navigation in human environments, to social interactions, to kinesthetic teaching/learning from (physical) demonstration.

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Thanks for putting together the proposed topic. For people interested in this category please fill out the poll below. We’d like to make sure that there’s critical inertia to make sure that the category will be useful and active.

  • I plan to participate regularly in the proposed HRI category
  • I plan to participate occasionally in the proposed HRI category
  • I would like to subscribe to discussions in the proposed HRI category

0 voters

And please let others who might be interested know about this poll.