Will You Participate? Exploring the Potential of Robotics Competitions on Human-centric Topics

This paper presents findings from an exploratory needfinding study investigating the research current status and potential participation of the competitions on the robotics community towards four human-centric topics: safety, privacy, explainability, and federated learning. We conducted a survey with 34 participants across three distinguished European robotics consortia, nearly 60% of whom possessed over five years of research experience in robotics. Our qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed that current mainstream robotic researchers prioritize safety and explainability, expressing a greater willingness to invest in further research in these areas. Conversely, our results indicate that privacy and federated learning garner less attention and are perceived to have lower potential. Additionally, the study suggests a lack of enthusiasm within the robotics community for participating in competitions related to these topics. Based on these findings, we recommend targeting other communities, such as the machine learning community, for future competitions related to these four human-centric topics.