(excerpt from Microsoft.com)

"Microsoft Research has announced the 8 recipients of the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) RFP awards, totaling over $500,000 (USD) in funding.

"HRI is a large field with many active research projects in universities and other labs around the world. But much of the research to date has been focused on the robot and human somewhat in isolation from the broader computing environment around them. Our intention in this RFP is to focus attention on the general paradigm shift from “robots as tools” to “social robots”, and consider HRI in the context of the existence of a plethora of other computing devices deployed in the modern human environment, including PCs, smart phones, and the World Wide Web.

...

"In 2005, the response to Hurricane Katrina exposed several technological gaps.  In a day where satellite photography is becoming ubiquitous in our digital lives, it was surprising to find that many response groups were still using hand-drawn paper maps.  Additionally, advanced technology such as robot cameras were limited to sending video only to the operators at the site and not immediately to the command staff.  These gaps are largely due to the fact that there was no common computing platform to bring all of this information to the command staff.  This common computing platform would need to be able to interact with many different personnel from different backgrounds and expertise.  Our proposed research intends to bridge the technological gaps through the use of collaborative tabletop multi-touch displays such as the Microsoft Surface.  We will develop an API between the multi-touch display and Microsoft Robotics Studio that will allow us to create a multi-robot interface for command staff to monitor and interact with all of the robots deployed at a disaster response."