This book, by Laura Major and Julie Shah shows the reality in designing robot systems that are regularly around humans. I started reading this book before I started my PhD, so it gave me a lot of interesting ideas to look into as I started ramping up at USC.

The book interlaces many of its points with stories in aviation and human-robot interaction research, making for an enjoyable reading experience. Since I’m still finding my bearings in HRI research, this book provided a really good introduction to the effects of the design decisions that researchers study. The emphasis that people come from different cultures and its relationship to the social acceptance of autonomous robots really hits it home for me. Additionally, since robots have their own goals, and there are likely going to be many competing companies with their own robots, the interaction complexity with humans skyrockets. I’ll probably be coming back to this book in the future.