In this chapter we review the status of human–robot interaction (HRI) including current research directions within robotics that may impact issues of law, policy, and regulations. While the focus of this book is on HRI experienced in social contexts, to provide a broad review of the legal and policy issues impacted by HRI, we discuss different areas of robotics that require various levels of human interaction and supervisory control of robots. We note that robots have evolved from continuous human-controlled master–slave servomechanisms for handling nuclear waste to a broad range of robots incorporating artificial intelligence (AI), which are under human supervisory control but becoming more autonomous. Further, we note that research on human interaction with robots is a rapidly evolving field and specialized robots under human teleoperation have proven successful in hazardous environments and for medical and other applications. There is also a noticeable trend for more humanoid-appearing and AI-enabled robots interacting with humans in social contexts, and for this class of robots we discuss emerging issues of law, regulations, and policy.

This chapter introduces issues of law, policy, and regulations for human interaction with robots that are AI enabled, expressive, humanoid in appearance, and that are anthropomorphized by users. These features are leading to a class of robots that are beginning to pose unique challenges to courts, legislators, and the robotics industry as they consider how the behavior of robots operating with sophisticated social skills and increasing levels of intelligence should be regulated. In this chapter we introduce basic terms, definitions, and concepts which relate to human interaction with AI-enabled and social robots and we review some of the regulations, statutes, and case law which apply to such robots and we do so specifically in the context of human–robot interaction. Our goal in this chapter is to provide a conceptual framework for the chapters which follow focusing on human interaction with robots that are becoming more like us in form and behavior.

In this concluding chapter, we discuss future directions in law, policy, and regulations for robots that are expressive, humanoid in appearance, becoming smarter, and that are anthropomorphized by users. Given the wide range of skills shown by this emerging class of robots, legal scholars, legislators, and roboticists are beginning to discuss how law, policy, and regulations should be applied to robots that are becoming more like us in form and behavior. For such robots, we propose that human–robot interaction should be the focus of efforts to regulate increasingly smart, expressive, humanoid, and social robots. Therefore, in the context of human–robot interaction, this chapter summarizes our views on future directions of law and policy for robots that are becoming highly social and intelligent, displaying the ability to detect and express emotions, and controversially, in the view of some commentators, beginning to display a rudimentary level of self-awareness.