Among people who understand the robots are coming, there’s a big unanswered question kicking around: What are they going to look like? Will they have friendly faces or will they be impersonal hunks of metal with mechanical arms and sensors making them look more like forklifts and skid steer loaders?

Or maybe something else?

I saw an excellent panel last month at The Next Endeavor conference in Mountain View, Calif., put on by With Imagination in Action. (I help the organization put on these events.) No less than four business leaders involved in the robotics industry were interviewed by pro reporter Krystal Hu about how robots and what they might look like soon.

The Humans and the Robots Should Be Friends

Early in the talk, the group discussed some of the ways that robots will be integrated into human society.

“I think there are multiple layers of robot-human interaction,” said Brad Porter of Collaborative Robotics. “You can start from fenced-off, right.”

He cited the design of Amazon robotic fields, with robotic mops and vacuum cleaners working in airports alongside humans, doing what he called “turn-taking work.”

“We do this at Mayo Clinic,” he said, giving another practical example, “where the staff hands off a cart, the robot comes and grabs a cart and takes it.”

Then, there’s joint work, a closer collaboration.

“Maybe you’ve got a robotic surgeon collaborating with a human surgeon,” Porter said. “I think that progression requires expectation and trust management, right? In order for a human to collaborate, the human needs to understand what the robot’s capabilities are, and what the robot is likely to do. And setting those expectations is not just software and AI, but it’s design.”

This transparency is paramount.

“We make the wheels visible, so you can see which way the robot’s likely to be turning. If you shroud the wheels, you can’t tell which way it’s going to go. As the AI gets better and better, then the robot can understand better and better what the human is doing, and have a better expectation to model for the human, and that allows for that kind of joint work.”

“One of the biggest things, and most important things, is safety,” said panelist Aaron Edsinger of Hello Robot. “You really have to get that right. You have to design for it from the........

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