Robots deployed in public settings, such as autonomous delivery robots or shuttles, have been operating services in towns and cities internationally in recent years. Yet there is little systematic understanding of how everyday interactions with / around such technologies impact citizens dwelling amongst them, living and working in the places robots now also inhabit.
What are we trying to do?
We want to centre mundane everyday experiences of autonomous robots in public places as an inherently revealing and valuable research site that tends to be overlooked by current ways of discussing and imagining public robots and civic robotics in general. By drawing together networks and partners spanning transport, HCI, HRI, robotics, sociology and linguistics, we want to foster partnerships between existing and new collaborators to share empirical data on human-robot interactions in public, and via this jointly develop interdisciplinary insights to inform future design of responsible civic robotics with a specific focus on robots in public.
Our project has the following objectives:
Developing and supporting a network of researchers investigating robot autonomy in public
Constructing interdisciplinary links between sociological studies of robot autonomy in public, and partners (e.g., video-based studies of interaction, engineers, human-robot interaction researchers, etc.)
Informing emerging frameworks underpinning concepts of civic robotics – taking into account a broad picture including regulatory, governance, and responsibility angles
Activities
Collaborate with VTI via visit(s) to Linköping, Sweden
Develop further empirical studies via new data collection (e.g., delivery robots, autonomous shuttles and their drivers, etc.)
Run data sessions throughout project to bring together and jointly analyse researchers’ examples of robots in public, produce findings and identify connections
Host an international interdisciplinary workshop with network of researchers and partners interested in robots in public, present empirical findings, discuss robots in public and responsibility, craft a joint stance on civic robotics
Provide a workshop write up for sharing outcomes, and run a project dissemination event
Outputs and related work
Existing research underpinning this project is reported in the following papers:
Hannah R. M. Pelikan and Malte F. Jung. Designing Robot Sound-In-Interaction: The Case of Autonomous Public Transport Shuttle Buses (PDF, DOI). In Proc. HRI 2023.
