SFB 1410: Hybrid Societies: Humans Interacting with Embodied Technologies

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Digital technologies gain autonomy and meet humans in more and more places in various physical forms, for instance as self-driving vehicles, robots, and drones, but also as avatars and other smart agents with virtual bodies. Digital technologies do also connect more often to the human body as digitally augmented prosthetics, exoskeletons, and virtual reality goggles, for example. Such technologies are embodied digital technologies (EDTs). Autonomously acting EDTs and humans sharing real or virtual environments as well as humans wearing EDTs or operating artificial bodies create hybrid societies. For efficient and smooth interaction in hybrid societies, human capabilities and technological possibilities have to be analyzed with specific foci and matched in novel ways. To this end, social sciences, humanities, and engineering disciplines have to join forces. The collaborative research of these disciplines on human-machine interaction is exceptionally strong at Chemnitz University of Technology. The CRC Hybrid Societies gathers the local expertise around a core in psychology and creates an international center for empirical investigation, analysis, and development that are urgently needed to ensure the most beneficial coexistence of living and synthetic bodies in the imminent hybrid societies. The CRC’s two leading research questions are: What is required so that humans can coordinate with EDTs as smoothly as with conspecifics? And: How to design EDTs to meet these requirements? For smooth coordination in shared environments, perceiving general capabilities and situation-specific intentions of interaction partners as well as predictable and cooperative action control are needed on the sides of both humans and EDTs. Accordingly, research in the CRC is grouped in four connected research areas: (A) Embodied Sensor and Motor Capabilities encompasses sensing, predicting, and executing movements when coordinating and interacting with EDTs. (B) Artificial Bodies comprises attributing capabilities to EDTs based on the appearance of their artificial bodies and their behavior as well as experiencing artificial bodies as substitutes or extensions of the human body. (C) Shared Environments targets joint attention, spatial orientation, and coordinated behavior of humans and EDTs. Fourth, (D) Intentionality in Hybrid Societies focuses on the attribution and communication of situation- specific intentions between humans and EDTs. Thus, the CRC Hybrid Societies comprehensively addresses looming societal challenges. It arises from collaborative research projects and infrastructure in the university’s core competencies Humans and Technology, and Materials and Intelligent Systems, and will strengthen and expand them substantially - also via the CRC's integrated and internationally embedded research training group - to form a future-oriented and internationally recognized science center that generates sound scientific results ensuring beneficial hybrid societies.