Although the ideas that underpin Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) are not new, the concepts and organizing principles of this field have recently coalesced into a standalone, experimentally verifiable line of inquiry. The field of human–robot interaction is an amalgam of concepts and methods from psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, engineering and even more remote fields, such as ethology. There are few interconnecting conceptual threads binding the different portions of the field, and even fewer threads that run through the field as a whole. So, encapsulating the ideas that comprise HRI with a single title is not easy. Nevertheless, Bartneck, Belpaeme, Eyssel, Kanda, Keijsers and Sabanovic’s recently published work does an admirable job of serving up HRI in digestible pieces.