Robots are being considered for applications where they serve as proxies for humans interacting with another human, such as emergency response, hostage negotiation, and healthcare. In these domains, the human ("dependent") is connected to multiple other humans ("controllers") via the robot proxy for long periods of time. The dependent may want to interact with humans but also to engage the robot as a medium to the World Wide Web. In the future, medical personnel may use the robot for victim assistance and comfort (i.e., a "survivor buddy" such as seen in Fig. 1(a)) while the rescue team plans and monitors extrication. Other applications include healthcare, where the robot is the link between a patient and a medical provider for intermittent, routine interactions, and hostage negotiation, where police may use a bomb squad robot to talk with and build rapport with the suspect while the SWAT team uses the robot's sensors to build and maintain situation awareness.
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