User-Adaptive Interaction in Social Robots: A Survey Focusing on Non-physical Interaction

This work presents a survey on the usage of user-adaptive techniques for human interface with Social Robots, with focus on non-physical interaction. The work is based on an analysis of a number of recent scientific works, and aims to uncover existing scientific and technological gaps which can serve as basis for future research and development work. User-adaptive systems consist of autonomous agents that are able to use some manner of information on their user in order to adapt to them. Through their adaptive nature, these systems have been shown to be easier to accept by end-users, and to lead to improvements in a myriad of objective and subjective performance measurements. Thus, in the context of a growing domestic Social Robot industry, it becomes of key importance to study the scientific and technological frontiers of this field. In order to uncover potential lines of future research, we propose a taxonomy for the classification of works, which we use to analyse the works under survey, exposing the current scientific frontiers of the area. Aiming to establish the overall readiness of the field, we also analyse the maturity of the works under survey, exposing the current technological level of the techniques at hand and discussing a number of technological challenges.