  With the advances in robotic technology, research in human-robot
collaboration (HRC) has gained in importance. For robots to interact with
humans autonomously they need active decision making that takes human partners
into account. However, state-of-the-art research in HRC does often assume a
leader-follower division, in which one agent leads the interaction. We believe
that this is caused by the lack of a reliable representation of the human and
the environment to allow autonomous decision making. This problem can be
overcome by an embodied approach to HRC which is inspired by psychological
studies of human-human interaction (HHI). In this survey, we review
neuroscientific and psychological findings of the sensorimotor patterns that
govern HHI and view them in a robotics context. Additionally, we study the
advances made by the robotic community into the direction of embodied HRC. We
focus on the mechanisms that are required for active, physical human-robot
collaboration. Finally, we discuss the similarities and differences in the two
fields of study which pinpoint directions of future research.
