Making Sense of Public Space
for Robot Design

A design framework for robots in public places

If robots are to be deployed in public places, we need to understand what factors their design should consider. Our HRI 2025 paper "Making Sense of Public Space for Robot Design" tackles this issue head-on. The framework presented in this paper and reproduced on this page, is intended for understanding, reflecting upon, and sensitising design to issues that might impact public-area mobile robots (PMRs, cf. Urban Robotics Foundation's work on ISO 4448). The published paper goes into much more depth, of course, but we summarise its core components with illustrative videos below.

The framework is inspired by sociological studies of urban settings, particularly the work of William H. Whyte and the Street Life Project. It follows a similar format to the Project for Public Space's Place Diagram.

What the framework means

We describe four characteristics of public places that affect and are affected by robot design. Our paper presents these characteristics as part of a broader design framework for informing and reflecting on design of / for public robots:

• localism—how robot design aligns with the identity, culture, and character the place(s) they reside within
• environment—the physical characteristics (designed and emergent) of the environment in which public robots operate
• activities—consideration for the various daily, occasional, and situational activities that are tied to place(s) robots inhabit, unfolding across different scales and temporalities
• sociability—how people collectively and individually relate to, interact with, and make sense of robots deployed in public places

Localism back to top

Localism describes how the robot matches the character of the place in which it is operating.

Public robots deployed may be adjusted to the character of the local place by choosing specific forms of visual presentation (e.g., distinctive livery); the use of cultural references (e.g., to a local mascot or giving the robot a name); and adjustments to the physical arrangement around the robot (e.g., marking areas for robots).

Environment back to top

The physical characteristics of the environment affect how robots move in them.

For robots, the specific environment can play an important role in their public deployment. Our framework describes distinct aspects of this characteristic including: the hospitability of the built environment and its physical infrastructure (e.g., steep roads or high curbs); nature (e.g., wind, rain, snow, plant growth); and mobile objects (e.g., wheelie bins, parked bikes).

Activities back to top

Places change over time; people can significantly transform public spaces over the course of a day, week, month, or year.

The challenge here for designing robots is that this dynamism of activities can sometimes rub up against the fixity of computational rule sets. We break these patterns down into subcharacteristics: the daily rhythms of places (e.g., rush hours); activities tied to specific occasions that impact places (e.g., seasonal festivities, construction work); and situations that emerge spontaneously (e.g., people chatting in the middle of the path (of a robot), loading and unloading activities).

Sociability back to top

Places are sites of sociability, whether it is through musicians that bring people together or street corners that attract social life.

This characteristic is further subdivided into more distinctions, describing both intended aspects that are designed, in the sense of “designed-for” (e.g., a robot's lights, emitted sounds), and unintended aspects that are difficult to anticipate and may be supportive (e.g., people living obstacles out of a robot's way) or inhibitive to robots (e.g., getting too close to robot such that it stops, or putting obstacles in its way).