As the new century approaches, the spread of nationally and internationally accessible computer-based communication networks has touched the imagination of people everywhere. Suddenly, the Internet is in everyday parlance, featured in talk shows, in special business technology sections of major newspapers, and on the covers of national magazines. If the Internet is a new world of social behaviour it is also a new world for those who study social behaviour.

This special issue is made up of five articles which cover the emerging area of human-robot interaction. The first paper offers a theoretical ecological framework for the design of personal service robots in homes of elderly people. Next, a field study of two robots that visited a children's elementary school in Japan for two weeks, with the purpose of teaching children English, is presented. The third article reports on an opportunistic field study of search and rescue robots used as part of a night rescue training exercise. A different perspective on human-computer interaction for search...