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Service robots in the domestic environment: a study of the roomba vacuum in the home
Abstract
Domestic service robots have long been a staple of science fiction and commercial visions of the future. Until recently, we have only been able to speculate about what the experience of using such a device might be. Current domestic service robots, introduced as consumer products, allow us to make this vision a reality.This paper presents ethnographic research on the actual use of these products, to provide a grounded understanding of how design can influence human-robot interaction in the home. We used an ecological approach to broadly explore the use of this technology in this context, and to determine how an autonomous, mobile robot might "fit" into such a space. We offer initial implications for the design of these products: first, the way the technology is introduced is critical; second, the use of the technology becomes social; and third, that ideally, homes and domestic service robots must adapt to each other.
... 637; see also [34]). Numerous HRI studies demonstrate that the use of household robots is shaped by gendered, cultural norms around domestic responsibility and technical expertise [36][37][38][39]. Though women traditionally dedicate more time to household tasks such as vacuuming, researchers find that men and children started to take on cleaning roles when robotic vacuum cleaners (e.g. ...
... Though women traditionally dedicate more time to household tasks such as vacuuming, researchers find that men and children started to take on cleaning roles when robotic vacuum cleaners (e.g. Roomba) were introduced [37,39]. Robotic vacuum cleaners were also often given male names by users [40]. ...
Understanding the motivations underlying the human inclination to automate tasks is vital to developing truly helpful robots integrated into daily life. Accordingly, we ask: are individuals more inclined to automate chores based on the time they consume or the feelings experienced while performing them? This study explores these preferences and whether they vary across different social groups (i.e., gender category and income level). Leveraging data from the BEHAVIOR-1K dataset, the American Time-Use Survey, and the American Time-Use Survey Well-Being Module, we investigate the relationship between the desire for automation, time spent on daily activities, and their associated feelings - Happiness, Meaningfulness, Sadness, Painfulness, Stressfulness, or Tiredness. Our key findings show that, despite common assumptions, time spent does not strongly relate to the desire for automation for the general population. For the feelings analyzed, only happiness and pain are key indicators. Significant differences by gender and economic level also emerged: Women prefer to automate stressful activities, whereas men prefer to automate those that make them unhappy; mid-income individuals prioritize automating less enjoyable and meaningful activities, while low and high-income show no significant correlations. We hope our research helps motivate technologies to develop robots that match the priorities of potential users, moving domestic robotics toward more socially relevant solutions. We open-source all the data, including an online tool that enables the community to replicate our analysis and explore additional trends at https://hri1260.github.io/why-automate-this.
... These robotic systems represent a relative majority of the reviewed literature (13 studies, 24%). Recently, several domestic service robots are increasingly considered as consumer products with the primary aim to support and increase the quality of life in many areas [33]. ...
... The model-driven engineering for robotics provides a methodology -exploiting languages, patterns, tools and infrastructures -to support the development, evolution and operation of robotic applications. It can be argued that CB-R has paved the way for model-driven robotics as architectural components bridge the gap between the requirements of a specific domain (navigation [40], automation [33], Figure 9) and satisfying those requirements with executable code. ' -Platform Independent Level representing Architectural Components: once the requirements have been captured, they are translated into components for architectural modeling independent of any (execution or deployment) platform. ...
Software architecture related issues are important for robotic systems. Architecture centric development and evolution of software for robotic systems has been attracting researchers attention for more than two decades. The objective of this work is to systematically identify, taxonomically classify and holistically map existing solutions, research progress and trends that influence architecture-driven modeling, development and evolution of robotic software. We carried out a Systematic Mapping Study to identify and analyze the relevant literature based on 56 peer-reviewed papers. We extract and synthesize the data from selected papers to taxonomically classify the existing research and systematically map the solutions, frameworks, notations and evaluation methods to highlight the role of software architecture in robotic systems. We have identified eight distinct research themes that support architectural solutions to enable operations, evolution and development specific activities of robotic software. The research in this area has progressed from object oriented to component based and now to service driven robotics representing different architectural generations. The reported solutions have exploited model-driven, service oriented and reverse engineering techniques since 2005. An emerging trend is cloud robotics that exploits the foundations of service driven architectures to support an interconnected web of robots. The results of this SMS facilitate knowledge transfer, benefiting researchers and practitioners, focused on exploiting software architecture to model, develop and evolve robotic systems.
... This activity is not only at home but also in offices or shopping centers [6]. Use of domestic service robots relating to technology adoption, human-computer interaction, and ubiquitous computing [2]. There are lot of vacuum cleaner robot in market. ...
... The drawbacks of vacuum cleaner are crashing with obstacles and stopped at a shorter distance from walls and other objects. It was not able to reach to all corners and edges of the room and left those areas unclean [2]. Also most automatic floor cleaner robot has brushes attached to its sides to collect the dust. ...
In the highly competitive world, the integrated smart home cleaning robot is an essential part of household activities. This paper examines the Kansei engineering framework for integrating automated smart home cleaning robots to help to clean and mob the floor, breaking cobwebs, clean the window glass, and tidy up children's toys and their stuff everywhere in the house. According to the research findings, when developing this kind of robot most of the women think about maintainability, safety, and faultlessness before buying this kind of home cleaning robot. The Kansei engineering method is the best way to find out how people think about the product.
... Application for self-reconfigurable robots for urban search rescue tasks is demonstrated with the developed robot JL-I in [7] with design the realization of using serial and parallel mechanisms in [8]. The potential application and the advantage in terms of the higher area coverage for floor cleaning with shape-changing robot hTetro [9] and supporting design evaluation of mechanisms in [9] is proven over the fixed form robot designed like iRoomba [10]. Similarly, with the design of reconfigurable drain inspection robot with an ability to step change upto a meter height is reported in [11,12]. ...
... However, design experience, expertise, and other factors may influence the results, and future studies will account for such elements. Overall, the presented case 10 Copyright © 2023 by ASME study provides the following insights and hypotheses: ...
Designed for engineers, designers, and enthusiasts, the Design Transformation Card is a perfect comprehensive toolkit for the conceptualisation and creation of reconfigurable systems. It uses tested and validated principles drawn from engineering design and robotics to visually illustrate transformation modes and means for easy explorations of suitable mechanisms. Examples of system mechanisms associated with each principle also offer practical insights and starting points to encourage the creativity and confidence of users.
... Application for self-reconfigurable robots for urban search rescue tasks is demonstrated with the developed robot JL-I in [7] with design the realization of using serial and parallel mechanisms in [8]. The potential application and the advantage in terms of the higher area coverage for floor cleaning with shape-changing robot hTetro [9] and supporting design evaluation of mechanisms in [9] is proven over the fixed form robot designed like iRoomba [10]. Similarly, with the design of reconfigurable drain inspection robot with an ability to step change upto a meter height is reported in [11,12]. ...
... However, design experience, expertise, and other factors may influence the results, and future studies will account for such elements. Overall, the presented case 10 Copyright © 2023 by ASME study provides the following insights and hypotheses: ...
Designed for engineers, designers, and enthusiasts, the Design Transformation Card is a perfect comprehensive toolkit for the conceptualisation and creation of reconfigurable systems. It uses tested and validated principles drawn from engineering design and robotics to visually illustrate transformation modes and means for easy explorations of suitable mechanisms. Examples of system mechanisms associated with each principle also offer practical insights and starting points to encourage the creativity and confidence of users.
... These practices have the potential to illuminate the matrix of fundamental questions concerning the relationship between technology and society (Suchman, 2019). Forlizzi and DiSalvo's (2006) figural ethnographic work on Roomba, the machine that moves "autonomously across the floor, brushing or vacuuming dirt and dust into a dustbin" (p. 258), highlights that cleaning and cleanliness are not the only aspects that constitute housework. ...
... This is important work since half the participants reported modifying or changing their homes. However, according to Forlizzi and DiSalvo's (2006) study, these pre-cleaning activities "seemed to be worth the benefit of having the work done automatically" (p. 263). ...
Abstract:
In this chapter, we examine the technologies that have penetrated homes to address housework and consider how these have affected the gender division of labor in the domestic sphere. While men’s involvement in housework remains low relative to women globally, there has been a notable rise in their engagement in childcare over recent years. However, this increase has not extended significantly to more physical, labor-intensive household tasks like cleaning, laundry, ironing, cooking, dusting, table management, and grocery shopping. Our purpose is first to trace a short, historical account of domestic appliances and digital technologies and then of more sophisticated technologies that have arrived in the home, such as social robots and robotic products.
After World War II, there was a surge in the household adoption of appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, polishers, and food processors. It was later that microwaves became common in homes. Subsequently, after a period with few new introductions, innovative devices like the Bimby kitchen machine (aka Thermomix), Roomba vacuum cleaners, and robotic lawnmowers began to gain popularity. In this chapter, we aim to understand (1) if each technological wave addressed a specific target (women, men, or family members in general); (2) how these technologies interacted with the organization and gender division of domestic labor and social gender roles, and (3) which needs are unsatisfactorily addressed and why.
Keywords: Domestic appliances, domestic robots, Roomba, Bimby, housework
... Combining the benefits of DL and RL-DeepRL can achieve endto-end autonomous learning and control using high-dimensional raw environment input data that is mapped to actions in real-world domains. In past, the whole range of scenarios including various learning algorithms, such as Q-learning [8], with exploration methods, such as Greedy, Softmax, have also been examined when applying RL to domestic robots [9]. The outcome demonstrated the huge potential of RL in robot applications. ...
... According to [31] research, social interactions with robots include playing with a moving robot, identifying your robot, working together to clean, and more. Similar to this, [6,9] research reveals that by altering who cleans and how, cleaning robots may have an impact on family dynamics. A cleaning robot has the ability to turn cleaning into a family-wide social activity according to [32]. ...
The market for domestic robots made to perform household chores is growing as these robots relieve people of everyday responsibilities. Domestic robots are generally welcomed for their role in easing human labor, in contrast to industrial robots, which are frequently criticized for displacing human workers. But before these robots can carry out domestic chores, they need to become proficient in several minor activities, such as recognizing their surroundings, making decisions, and picking up on human behaviors. Reinforcement learning, or RL, has emerged as a key robotics technology that enables robots to interact with their environment and learn how to optimize their actions to maximize rewards. However, the goal of Deep Reinforcement Learning is to address more complicated, continuous action-state spaces in real-world settings by combining RL with Neural Networks. The efficacy of DeepRL can be further augmented through interactive feedback, in which a trainer offers real-time guidance to expedite the robot's learning process. Nevertheless, the current methods have drawbacks, namely the transient application of guidance that results in repeated learning under identical conditions. Therefore, we present a novel method to preserve and reuse information and advice via Deep Interactive Reinforcement Learning, which utilizes a persistent rule-based system. This method not only expedites the training process but also lessens the number of repetitions that instructors will have to carry out. This study has the potential to advance the development of household robots and improve their effectiveness and efficiency as learners.
... Robots were invented as a part of industry revolution and they were a part of supportive hands with human work forces, robotic application in dental field initiated since 1967 by Jenkins [1] in dental clinics we can replace as dental assistant as smart robots that can be used in cleaning dental instruments, assisting patients in appointments, giving dental education to patients before procedures, post operative instructions. This type of works were feeded to robots using artificial intelligence. ...
... The most important one is to build a work chain that join hands to all important assets such as safety of humans, human-centered interaction, human-robot interaction, reliablity and initiate to use manipulation skills, which can be employed on a large scale with specific initial use-cases [1]. Creating on this ideas we brief out the technological advancements that have been made which enable the use of robotic technology in dental field. ...
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Neural Networks, Text to Speech, Virtual Reality Dentistry is one of the revolutionize field in the era of artificial intelligence. We have our day-today treatment aspects starting from proper case history, radiographs as well as diagnostic procedures followed by treatment procedures. Artificial intelligence are nowadays trending in giving patient appointments, diagnostic decision making and treatment perspectives like robotic surgeries. Another enlightening future perspective are man made robots becoming most useful in medical field which were keeping their first step into dentistry. Application of robots have advantage of avoiding procedural errors, working time is minimised, efficacy of doing procedures are precise. Using artificial intelligence along with robotic technology in the field of dentistry make much more advancements leads to new innovations in the treatment aspects of oral diseases, biopsy, surgery, orthodontic treatments, radiographic procedures and diagnostic steps. we will review as narrative in this article from origin of robotics with artificial intelligence upto date informa-tions spread like web in the field of dentistry.
... Application for self-reconfigurable robots for urban search rescue tasks is demonstrated with the developed robot JL-I in [7] with design the realization of using serial and parallel mechanisms in [8]. The potential application and the advantage in terms of the higher area coverage for floor cleaning with shape-changing robot hTetro [9] and supporting design evaluation of mechanisms in [10] is proven over the fixed form robot designed like iRoomba [11]. Similarly, with an innovative design of Mantis [12], which has the ability to crossover glass panels, results in higher vertical area coverage on glass facades with the ability to crossover the façade panels. ...
... This approach with design transformation cards can help designers assimilate large tasks by dividing them into subassemblies to assimilate the system requirements for any trans- The coverage process of the developed reconfigurable robotic platform (marked in red box) in Scenario-2. Wherein the robot can able to access the narrow space using its shapeshifting ability 11 Copyright © 2023 by ASME formable products/systems. However, design experience, expertise, and other factors may influence the results, and future studies will account for such elements. ...
Reconfigurable robotic systems (RRS) have demonstrated their usefulness in various sectors, including surveillance, rescue missions, space exploration, maintenance, and cleaning. However, designing adaptable and flexible robotic systems is challenging, and researchers have developed innovative mechanical designs that can optimize the performance of these systems in different applications. This paper introduces a method for designing a reconfigurable robot using earlier proposed design transformation cards (DTC) that illustrate mechanical mechanisms based on the transformation design theory. These cards serve as a visual tool for ideation and design-by-analogy, enabling designers to explore the best possible combinations of mechanical mechanisms for their robot design. The case study application of the DTC is presented by designing the block of an expandable Tetris-inspired robot named e-Smorphi (expandable-Smorphi) which consists of four units of expandable blocks that can change their dimensions in length and width, allowing for adaptation to different environments in two dimensions. The proposed design has potential application to the cleaning and maintenance industry, where the objective is to be maximizing the area coverage. The paper also describes experiments with the selected prototype, highlighting the reconfiguration in two dimensions while accessing the environment for cleaning and maintenance (CnM) tasks. The limitations and advantages of using DTC are also discussed as insights into the development of new design tools and techniques for reconfigurable robotics, paving the way for further innovation and advancements in the field.
... People expect to interact with robots in a social manner (Forlizzi & DiSalvo, 2006) rather than treating them as mere tools or things (Darling, 2016). In this context, a robot's ability to engage with and provide satisfactory experiences to people relies not only on its functional excellence but also on its social perception, which can significantly impact its acceptance and use in various settings (Breazeal, 2003;Leite et al., 2013;Young et al., 2009). ...
... People expect to interact with robots socially (Forlizzi & DiSalvo, 2006), and as a result, designers are required to treat robots as social actors (Lupetti et al., 2019). To meet this demand, many researchers have studied design attributes that enhance the social capabilities of robots and how to design them (Baraka et al., 2020;Breazeal, 2003;Fong et al., 2003). ...
The increasing prevalence of robots in our daily lives underscores the growing importance of how humans socially perceive them. While these social perceptions of robots are crucial to the success of human-robot interactions, more than traditional design attributes such as appearance and behavior may be required to draw intended perceptions. We explore a new approach to shaping social perceptions of robots using generative diaries. Generative diaries are automatically generated text entries that enable robots to communicate their experiences and perspectives to humans. We present and assess a case in which this was used to influence social perceptions of a public service robot named Beau. We designed a set of research prototypes, including Beau, a curation interface called HeyBeau, and a social media-like mobile application named IamBeau. Over 16 days, we deployed Beau in a university building and conducted an in-situ field study with 12 participants. Our findings indicate that generative diaries can enhance social perceptions of robots, particularly regarding warmth, by increasing awareness of robots’ intelligence, consciousness, emotion, identity, and desire for social communication. These findings demonstrate the potential of generative diaries in shaping social perceptions of robots and open up new possibilities for designing future human-robot interactions.
... You've already done that." [4] 3. Naming and Gendering: Beyond naming devices, users often arbitrarily assign them gender identities, reflecting a transfer of social schemas to inanimate objects. Some companies deliberately manage this tendency. ...
Digital devices have become increasingly integrated into daily human life,
leading to “techno-affection” – the development of emotional bonds
between humans and their digital devices. This phenomenon raises important
questions about human-computer interaction and its psychological impacts.
Through analysis of recent literature, we aim to identify key factors contributing to
this trend and discuss implications for human-computer interaction, social
psychology, and product design.
... Domestic robots include the commonly used Roomba [23] for vacuuming, and the more recent PR2 [9] for housekeeping. Furthermore, there are complex medical and surgical robots that can conduct patient check-ups and perform routine surgeries, hence assisting doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. ...
This second chapter of the book discusses the areas of robots,
drones and automated vehicles encompassing cars, trains and others. The evolution, significance, and decision-making capabilities of all these advances are addressed with respect to the critical role of AI within their functioning. There are modern day challenges with respect to bringing such systems closer to the thresholds of human cognition which pose non-trivial problems of much interest to the AI community. Such issues are mentioned in this chapter.
... [73], [74] tell us that it is natural for humans to try and extract information from robotic actions, subsequently attributing intentionality to robot movement characteristics and decision making. In [75], for instance, user study participants describe the movements of a robot vacuum cleaning system, the Roomba as "cute" or "pathetic", even though such a correlation may not have been intentioned. There are also instances where people name their Roomba robot, thus giving it an added social identity. ...
As robotic systems are moved out of factory work cells into human-facing environments questions of choreography become central to their design, placement, and application. With a human viewer or counterpart present, a system will automatically be interpreted within context, style of movement, and form factor by human beings as animate elements of their environment. The interpretation by this human counterpart is critical to the success of the system's integration: knobs on the system need to make sense to a human counterpart; an artificial agent should have a way of notifying a human counterpart of a change in system state, possibly through motion profiles; and the motion of a human counterpart may have important contextual clues for task completion. Thus, professional choreographers, dance practitioners, and movement analysts are critical to research in robotics. They have design methods for movement that align with human audience perception, can identify simplified features of movement for human-robot interaction goals, and have detailed knowledge of the capacity of human movement. This article provides approaches employed by one research lab, specific impacts on technical and artistic projects within, and principles that may guide future such work. The background section reports on choreography, somatic perspectives, improvisation, the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System, and robotics. From this context methods including embodied exercises, writing prompts, and community building activities have been developed to facilitate interdisciplinary research. The results of this work is presented as an overview of a smattering of projects in areas like high-level motion planning, software development for rapid prototyping of movement, artistic output, and user studies that help understand how people interpret movement. Finally, guiding principles for other groups to adopt are posited.
... While there are some scenarios where agents are able to continue operating by collecting energy from the environment, such as gliding Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) exploiting thermals to remain airborne [1], in the majority of cases the agent uses a resource which must be replenished to enable persistence. Early work on replenishment involved the robot returning to a charging dock to facilitate autonomous recharging [2,3], which now forms the basis of recharging in some commercial systems such as the iRobot Roomba [4] and InTouch Health RP-7i [5]. However, there are many cases in which the use of a dedicated replenishment agent can provide direct benefit. ...
Consideration of resources such as fuel, battery charge, and storage space, is a crucial requirement for the successful persistent operation of autonomous systems. The Stochastic Collection and Replenishment (SCAR) scenario is motivated by mining and agricultural scenarios where a dedicated replenishment agent transports a resource between a centralised replenishment point to agents using the resource in the field. The agents in the field typically operate within fixed areas (for example, benches in mining applications, and fields or orchards in agricultural scenarios), and the motion of the replenishment agent may be restricted by a road network. Existing research has typically approached the problem of scheduling the actions of the dedicated replenishment agent from a short-term and deterministic angle. This paper introduces a method of incorporating uncertainty in the schedule optimisation through a novel prediction framework, and a branch and bound optimisation method which uses the prediction framework to minimise the downtime of the agents. The prediction framework makes use of several Gaussian approximations to quickly calculate the risk-weighted cost of a schedule. The anytime nature of the branch and bound method is exploited within an MPC-like framework to outperform existing optimisation methods while providing reasonable calculation times in large scenarios.
... For instance, Oberman and colleagues [40] demonstrated that aggressive behavior towards a non-anthropomorphic robot (emotional priming) can alter the activity of the mirror-neuron system, with a stronger response when participants are primed with a sad story about the observed actor. Also, people tend to develop an intimate connection with robots by assigning them names, personal traits, intentions, feelings, and unique characteristics [41,42]. ...
In a multi-objective problem, no single solution optimally satisfies all objectives. Thus, the challenge is to find a balance between conflicting objectives. The decision-making necessarily requires human intervention. The person responsible for selecting the most appropriate solution among all the trade-off solutions is the decision maker (DM). The DM seeks to approach only the solutions that best suit her/his preferences. Since there is plenty of specialized literature showing that emotions play a critical role in decision-making, we aim to incorporate them into the decision-making process. To elicit emotions that can be quantifiable, we propose the Emotional Assessment Method. The method presents a simulation of the objectives to be optimized that represents the consequences of each decision. Using this methodology, the decision maker assesses the emotions evoked by each presented simulation to guide his/her search for solutions that satisfy his/her preferences. As a case study, we aim to identify subjects’ preferences towards robot behaviors. Seventy-two subjects with varying levels of familiarity with robots (divided into two datasets) participated in the experiments. We concluded that the method elicits subjects’ emotions while observing the consequences of the robot’s performance. Also, we found out that it is possible to identify subjects’ preferences based on both the context and the emotions to select the robot’s behavior.
... For instance, Oberman and colleagues [40] demonstrated that aggressive behavior towards a non-anthropomorphic robot (emotional priming) can alter the activity of the mirror-neuron system, with a stronger response when participants are primed with a sad story about the observed actor. Also, people tend to develop an intimate connection with robots by assigning them names, personal traits, intentions, feelings, and unique characteristics [41,42]. ...
In a multi-objective problem, no single solution optimally satisfies all objectives. Thus, the challenge is to find a balance between conflicting objectives. The decision-making necessarily requires human intervention. The person responsible for selecting the most appropriate solution among all the trade-off solutions is the decision maker (DM). The DM seeks to approach only the solutions that best suit her/his preferences. Since there is plenty of specialized literature showing that emotions play a critical role in decision-making, we aim to incorporate them into the decision-making process. To elicit emotions that can be quantifiable, we propose the Emotional Assessment Method. The method presents a simulation of the objectives to be optimized that represents the consequences of each decision. Using this methodology, the decision maker assesses the emotions evoked by each presented simulation to guide his/her search for solutions that satisfy his/her preferences. As a case study, we aim to identify subjects’ preferences towards robot behaviors. Seventy-two subjects with varying levels of familiarity with robots (divided into two datasets) participated in the experiments. We concluded that the method elicits subjects’ emotions while observing the consequences of the robot’s performance. Also, we found out that it is possible to identify subjects’ preferences based on both the context and the emotions to select the robot’s behavior.
... We gave standardized introductions on using the robot. This step was necessary because prior work shows that how a robot is first introduced directly affects how people use it [62], even after months of use [44]. Participants examined the robot's box as if they were buying it at a store; then we helped assemble it. ...
Loneliness is increasingly common, especially among older adults. Technology like mobile telepresence robots can help people feel less lonely. However, such technology has challenges, and even if people use it in the short term, they may not accept it in the long term. Prior work shows that it can take up to six months for people to fully accept technology. This study focuses on exploring the nuances and fluidity of acceptance phases. This paper reports a case study of four older adult participants living with a mobile telepresence robot for seven months. In monthly interviews, we explore their progress through the acceptance phases. Results reveal the complexity and fluidity of the acceptance phases. We discuss what this means for technology acceptance. In this paper, we also make coding guidelines for interviews on acceptance phases more concrete. We take early steps in moving toward a more standard interview and coding method to improve our understanding of acceptance phases and how to help potential users progress through them.
... They will act as chefs, caregivers and cleaners. We find an example of a commercial robot Roomba, a vacuum cleaner robot [62] however, we don't believe it is an adaptive social robot as it does not fall under the definition as given by [9,63]. In addition, in order for a robot to integrate at homes, it needs to have a social mechanism. ...
As the field of social robotics is growing, a consensus has been made on the design and implementation of robotic systems that are capable of adapting based on the user actions. These actions may be based on their emotions, personality or memory of past interactions. Therefore, we believe it is significant to report a review of the past research on the use of adaptive robots that have been utilised in various social environments. In this paper, we present a systematic review on the reported adaptive interactions across a number of domain areas during Human-Robot Interaction and also give future directions that can guide the design of future adaptive social robots. We conjecture that this will help towards achieving long-term applicability of robots in various social domains.
... . Technologies for young children, such as parental-controlled tablets and smart toys, often require parental supervision [36] but may overlook children's perspectives and input. Family-oriented technologies like voice assistants [2-4, 29, 37], domestic robots [9], and other emerging technologies [15,34] permeate children's lives. However, limited research examines the complex needs, conflicts, and tensions from family technology use [2,4,5,29,34]. ...
... 17 But note that this is true insofar as said design consolidation is late-stage. Early-stage design consolidation of intelligent services in conjunction with robotically driven production [97], which considers the changes in the structure and infrastructure of the architecture that must be adopted in order to enable robotic environments suitable for ubiquitous systems and service robots [27], [98], do in fact instigate considerable cost reductions [99]. 18 "An AAL environment might, for example, involve the user's own home. ...
This thesis presents an alternative approach to intelligence in the built-environment, departing from the two established yet divergent branches in the discourse: the Technical, centered around Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and represented by Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL); and the Architectural, centered around architectural / spatial experiences and considerations, and represented by Interactive Architecture and Adaptive Architecture. The promise of both AmI/AAL and IA/AA is constrained by rigid and increasingly outdated assumptions in their approaches—i.e., AmI’s / AAL’s approach to the built-environment, and IA’s / AA’s approach to ICTs. Moreover, it is impossible to combine them to yield a cohesive system due to disparity in their typical Technology Readiness Levels. That is, the sophistication of a system depends on that of its mutually complementing subsystems; and two or more subsystems may not mutually complement, sustain, and/or support one another if their levels of development do not correspond. Consequently, the presented alternative conceives the intelligent built-environment as a Cyber- Physical System. Under this approach, ICTs and Architectural considerations in conjunction instantiate intelligence fundamentally. The presented approach’s promise is illustrated via its application to a constrained use-case focused on the elderly. Twelve proof-of-concept demonstrators are developed based on key parameters pertaining to Indoor Environmental Quality and Quality of Life. While each demonstrator is presented as a discrete proof-of-concept, all build on the same core System Architecture and technological ecosystem, and are intended to be viewed as a collection of systems and services expressed within a same hypothetical environment.
... Qualitative research has been used to conduct investigations into the wider contexts, attitudes, and opinions of older adults towards robots in general, or to gain feedback on specific robotics solutions. This may vary from short focus groups, e.g., [38,46], observations and interviews, e.g., [47][48][49], to longer-term ethnographic studies, e.g., [50][51][52][53][54]. While these studies make a valuable contribution to our understanding of human attitudes and relations to robots, the data gathered is generally constrained by the study's orientation around feedback on a single robot, or a few specific robots. ...
Developing an authentic understanding of potential users’ needs and translating these into usable categories as an input to research and development is an open problem. It is generally accepted that genuine knowledge of user needs is essential for the creation of any new technology. For assistive robots, however, this knowledge is even more important for two key reasons. First, because the form and function of these technologies is still in the process of negotiation, and second, because assistive robots are ultimately intended for a vulnerable population. In this paper, we describe a number of existing strategies to address this challenge and discuss some of their shortcomings, including a loss of data richness and context, the stereotyping of users and a lack of transparency and traceability. The primary contribution of this paper is a novel Authentic Citations process for capturing needs which aims to address these shortcomings. This process involves a thematic analysis of complex qualitative data to derive robotics needs for older people, which emphasises the retention of the original situated description, or ‘authentic citation’, for ongoing sensitising and grounding at all stages of the research and development cycle, and by various stakeholders. The Authentic Citations process adds additional rigour to a process that can be tacit and opaque and can be used by robotics researchers to analyse and translate qualitative research into usable categories. An additional contribution of this paper is an initial outline of a taxonomy of assistive robotics needs for older people, which contributes to improving the understanding of the user as a situated and complex person and can be used as an input to design.
... Gender, Race, Age, Sexuality, and Disability. Recent HRI studies also focus on power structures, critically exploring dynamics including gender [23,32,51,97,185], racism [19], perceived age [152,179], sexuality [48], and disability [11,200] that collectively shape structural privilege and oppression. For instance, research has investigated the role of gender stereotypes [23,85,145,157,158,192] in shaping perceptions of robots, illustrated by Strait et al. [183] whose fndings reveal a signifcant prevalence of dehumanizing and sexualizing comments directed at female robots compared to their male and neutral robots. ...
... From the HRI psychological studies, we have seen that humans in general prospect engage with robots, in the same manner, they would with human people, forming social and emotional bonds with them ( [11], [12], [13], [14]). The emotional states may be divided into two categories: one that describes the valence of the emotion (on a scale of pleasantness to unpleasantness) and another that describes the equivalent amount of arousal/physiological activation. ...
... 17 But note that this is true insofar as said design consolidation is late-stage. Early-stage design consolidation of intelligent services in conjunction with robotically driven production [97], which considers the changes in the structure and infrastructure of the architecture that must be adopted in order to enable robotic environments suitable for ubiquitous systems and service robots [27], [98], do in fact instigate considerable cost reductions [99]. 18 "An AAL environment might, for example, involve the user's own home. ...
Discussions of intelligence in the built-environment began in the late 1960s and early 1970s [1]–[7]. They belonged to a broader technical and technological discourse, engaged across a variety of domains and disciplines, to explore potential opportunities entailed by the Information Age. During this nascent period, and partly due to the novelty of the exploration as well as to the rudimentary state and forbidding costs of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), said discussions were principally theoretical and/or hypothetical in nature and impartial to defined fields of inquiry. Two main branches developed, one Technical—stemming from Information Sciences and Engineering fields—and another Architectural.
In the Technical branch, Ambient Intelligence (AmI) was coined in the late 90s to describe a cohesive vision of a future digital living room, a built-environment whose computing hardware and software technology imbued its dwelling space with serviceable intelligence to the benefit of its occupant(s) [8]. Also salient in this branch was Ambient Assisted Living—or Active and Assisted Living—(AAL), which framed its inquiry around the promotion of quality of life as well as the prolongation of independence with respect to Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) [9] among the elderly via technical assistance [10].
In the Architectural branch, Cedric Price’s pioneering Generator Project and corresponding programs by John and Julia Frazer [11] in the late 70s, explored notions of interaction between human and non-human agents in the built-environment. In Price’s project, architecture was conceived as a set of interchangeable sub-systems integrated into a unifying computer system, which enabled a reconfigurability sensitive to function. Price and the Frazers intended for the system to suggest its own reconfigurations, denoting non-human agency.
The promise of solutions yielded by both AmI/AAL and IA/AA is limited by the rigid and increasingly outdated assumptions in their approaches. It is not possible, as they are and as they are currently developing, to combine AmI/AAL and IA/AA to yield a unified and cohesive approach. This is because the sophistication of a system will depend on that of its mutually complementing subsystems; and two or more subsystems may not mutually complement, sustain, and/or support one another properly if their levels of development and sophistication do not correspond [12]. That is: at present, the architectural does not correspond to the technically predominant AmI/AAL, while the technical does not correspond to the architecturally predominant IA/AA. Consequently, a different design-approach is required in order to enable comprehensively and cohesively intelligent built-environments with corresponding levels of technical and architectural sophistication. What could such an approach look like?
In this thesis, an alternative approach that conceives of the intelligent built-environment as a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) is presented and demonstrated. Under this approach, ICTs and Architectural considerations in conjunction instantiate intelligence fundamentally—i.e., unlike existing AmI/AAL or IA/AA approaches, the present approach subsumes enabling technologies into the very core of the built-environment, where a solution does not exist as such without either of its informational and physical constituents deliberately conceived for each other (if not formally, at least conceptually and operationally with respect to instantiated services).
In this thesis, the general potential and promise of the presented approach is illustrated via its application to a constrained use-case—i.e., that of intelligent built-environments for elderly assistance and care (also informally referred to as smart homes or environments). Twelve proof-of-concept demonstrators (see Chapter 5), each showcasing an intelligent product and/or a service—or combinations and sets thereof—integrated into the built-environment and/or its ecosystem, are developed. Eight established parameters (see Section 3.2)—four pertaining to Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) and four Quality of Life (QoL)—define the purpose and inform the design of each demonstrator’s setup and development within four types of demo environments (see Chapter 4)—two Physical (Hyperbody and Robotic Building) and two Virtual (Digital Twin and Non-descript). Each demonstrator, while presented as a discrete proof-of-concept, builds on the same core System Architecture, and are intended to be viewed as a collection of systems and services expressed within a same hypothetical environment. That is to say, all come together to represent the intelligent built-environment as CPS.
All demonstrators are functionally and physically developed and involve human participation to test and to validate both the feasibility and success of the concept. Success is determined if the developed products and services indeed provide added value to a user and/or occupant of the space—i.e., if they promote and contribute to well-being by assisting, facilitating, or enhancing. Accordingly, the tangible nature of the process and results promote—albeit in a limited scope—the presented approach in very real terms, and—hopefully—situate it as an alternative to existing modes of imbuing intelligence in the built-environment.
... Furthermore, regarding application devices related to the acceptance behaviour of older adults on social media, it mainly focuses on computers, smartphones (Yu 2020), and wearable products (Talukder et al. 2020). Although the research found that older people are more likely to use new devices in the home environment (Forlizzi and DiSalvo 2006), limited studies focus on the latest devices, such as smart home smart screens. ...
A sustainable future requires prioritising concerns like the well-being of older individuals, considering the world’s rapidly ageing population. This PhD thesis applies the research through an interdisciplinary approach, explores the user experience design factors and identifies the perception of older adults toward adopting smart home displays for their online social experiences. The research results include design theories and approaches, for instance, design guidelines, to support designers in designing social software on smart home products for older adults. Consequently, this approach can facilitate their online social experience within the home environment, leading to an enhancement in their overall well-being.
... In addition to managing the operation of the device through an app, these include keeping cables and wires off the floor, tucking in or taping down the tassel on rugs, removing small objects such as toys and rearranging furniture in order to prevent the device from becoming stuck (Sung et al. 2008;Bauwen and Fink 2012). Sometimes it is also necessary to restrict the area within which the device can move; this might be to prevent it knocking over water bowls for pets for example, or to ensure that a particularly messy area is cleaned thoroughly (Forlizzi and DiSalvo 2006). In such cases barriers are created either from what is on hand, such as cushions and boxes, or by utilizing virtual walls-devices which transmit infrared barriers around certain areas. ...
It is common to view the technologies that surround us as either tools or machines. This distinction is often understood to reflect a difference between kinds of technology: those which operate by human agency, and those which operate by their own, technological form of performative agency. This paper aims to explore how common arguments for the performative agency of machines ultimately fail to establish the claim that anything other than humans are capable of performing tasks. In light of such problems, I will propose an alternative conception which understands machines to be distinguished by the way in which the human agency on which they depend is concealed. After examining reasons why we should consider this concealment to represent a social rather than technological phenomenon, this paper concludes by exploring implications this view holds for the way in which the ethics of automation is approached in the philosophy of technology.
... Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) remains at the center stage of robotics research, after more than 30 years since its inception. SLAM is without a doubt a mature field of research, and the advances over the last three decades keep steadily transitioning into industrial applications, from domestic robotics [1]- [3], to self-driving cars [4] and virtual and augmented reality goggles [5], [6]. At the same time, its pervasive nature and its blurry boundaries as a robotics subfield still leave space for exciting research progress. ...
This paper surveys recent progress and discusses future opportunities for Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) in extreme underground environments. SLAM in subterranean environments, from tunnels, caves, and man-made underground structures on Earth, to lava tubes on Mars, is a key enabler for a range of applications, such as planetary exploration, search and rescue, disaster response, and automated mining, among others. SLAM in underground environments has recently received substantial attention, thanks to the
DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge
, a global robotics competition aimed at assessing and pushing the state of the art in autonomous robotic exploration and mapping in complex underground environments. This paper reports on the state of the art in underground SLAM by discussing different SLAM strategies and results across six teams that participated in the three-year-long SubT competition. In particular, the paper has four main goals. First, we review the algorithms, architectures, and systems adopted by the teams; particular emphasis is put on LIDAR-centric SLAM solutions (the go-to approach for virtually all teams in the competition), heterogeneous multi-robot operation (including both aerial and ground robots), and real-world underground operation (from the presence of obscurants to the need to handle tight computational constraints). We do not shy away from discussing the “dirty details” behind the different SubT SLAM systems, which are often omitted from technical papers. Second, we discuss the maturity of the field by highlighting what is possible with the current SLAM systems and what we believe is within reach with some good systems engineering. Third, we outline what we believe are fundamental open problems, that are likely to require further research to break through. Finally, we provide a list of open-source SLAM implementations and datasets that have been produced during the SubT challenge and related efforts, and constitute a useful resource for researchers and practitioners.
... First, smart home smart screens belong to a new category of smart home product forms. Studies have shown that older adults are more willing to use new technologies and services in the home environment (73). Second, in the context of social media use, the willingness of older adults to adopt new devices and technologies to socialize online is entirely voluntary. ...
As a new generation of necessary terminals for future homes, smart homes have become one of the essential mediums for smart aging at home. This paper aims to explore how older adults who age at home can overcome the digital divide of the new medium and achieve social participation in the home context to realize active aging. Based on the theory of social compensation, we select the smart-home smart screen, a representative new medium product in China, and carry out open coding, spindle coding, selective coding, and theoretical construction of the original interview data through the grounded theory research method. The results show that the main factors affecting the social compensation of older adults to smart home social media include user interface quality, interaction quality, content quality, and service quality, and these four factors are used as external variables to compensate older adults socially, thereby stimulating the emotional experience and perception changes at the cognitive level of older adults and then affecting the adoption and acceptance of smart home social media by older adults. This study refines the factors influencing the older adults’ use of smart home social media from the perspective of social compensation. It explains the mechanism of acceptable behavior of older adults, bridging the gap in previous literature on the influencing factors and behavioral mechanisms of older adults of smart home social media. This paper provides a theoretical basis and guidance for the subsequent academic research and software development practice of social media under new technological devices to further help older adults in China achieve active and healthy aging.
... Domestic robots such as vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers are becoming more popular in private homes as robotic variations of many common household appliances are continually being developed [6]. Recent research has shown that domestic robots have the potential to distribute responsibilities and disrupt classical roles assigned in the household [6], [7]. They can also affect relations between the users themselves [8]. ...
Robotic appliances are continually being adopted into private homes. However, users have yet to exhibit the same acceptance towards domestic social robots. In this paper, we seek to bridge this issue by augmenting already-existing home appliances with capabilities mimicking social robots. We present a robotic toaster designed with animated movements to enhance and personalize the toast-making experience. Not only does the robotic toaster assist in completing the task itself, it also acts as a conscious agent with whom users may interact in a social and playful manner. Using a series of video vignettes, we identify three key themes of the robotic toaster that influence its relationship with users: these are related to (1) context awareness, (2) increased interactivity through initiative action, and (3) expression of personality despite limited degrees of freedom. Lastly, we discuss how the portrayal of home appliances with social characteristics can potentially serve as an introductory step for social robots in the home.
... The latter are typically viewed as places where private life unfolds. HRI research offers a number of studies conducted in domestic settings where people shared households with robots to a varying degree, whether in real or simulated homes (Forlizzi and DiSalvo, 2006;Koay et al., 2009;Syrdal et al., 2009;Walters et al., 2011;Lee et al., 2022). This is also where one can observe the most frequent use of explicit references to the notion of everyday life, as it is taken-for-granted that daily life takes place at home (see, e.g., (Auger, 2014;de Graaf et al., 2016;Weiss and Hannibal, 2018)). ...
This paper focuses on the topic of “everyday life” as it is addressed in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research. It starts from the argument that while human daily life with social robots has been increasingly discussed and studied in HRI, the concept of everyday life lacks clarity or systematic analysis, and it plays only a secondary role in supporting the study of the key HRI topics. In order to help conceptualise everyday life as a research theme in HRI in its own right, we provide an overview of the Social Science and Humanities (SSH) perspectives on everyday life and lived experiences, particularly in sociology, and identify the key elements that may serve to further develop and empirically study such a concept in HRI. We propose new angles of analysis that may help better explore unique aspects of human engagement with social robots. We look at the everyday not just as a reality as we know it (i.e., the realm of the “ordinary”) but also as the future that we need to envision and strive to materialise (i.e., the transformation that will take place through the “extraordinary” that comes with social robots). Finally, we argue that HRI research would benefit not only from engaging with a systematic conceptualisation but also critique of the contemporary everyday life with social robots. This is how HRI studies could play an important role in challenging the current ways of understanding of what makes different aspects of the human world “natural” and ultimately help bringing a social change towards what we consider a “good life.”
... Ownership, power, and control (Hargreaves et al., 2018;Geeng and Roesner, 2019) are social concepts often discussed in relation to cultural history and politics, and prominent among such ongoing debates are aspects of gender. Researchers have pointed towards a gendered nature of technology design and use (Strengers et al., 2019;Richardson, 2009) that also manifests itself in men driving adoption and typically doing 'digital housekeeping' (Forlizzi and DiSalvo, 2006;Hargreaves et al., 2010;Tolmie et al., 2007). The introduction of new technology to the home could therefore alter the existing division of labor in the home by allowing men to justify contributing less to housework traditionally done by women (Strengers et al., 2019). ...
... It is not unusual for people to assign human-like characteristics to service robots. For example, in the early research on vacuum cleaning robots, one interviewed family stated, that they named their vacuum cleaning robot Manuel because it has a personality [8]. This early observation of anthropomorphizing robots can still be observed today, as a quick google search reveals inspiration for robot naming such as Clean Elisabeth or Cleanardo Di Caprio. ...
Delivery robots can contribute to efficient transportation and handover of goods in urban areas. To realize the full potential of this technology, users need to accept these novel systems. One possibility to increase acceptance is adapting the design of robots. The design of delivery robots, which are meant to function as tools but also interact closely with humans during transportation and delivery, presents both challenges and opportunities for increasing user acceptance. Specifically, anthropomorphic framing, or ascribing human-like characteristics to the robot, may influence acceptance. In addition, the type of goods being transported by the robot may also affect user acceptance. We used a video-based online experiment, to investigate how anthropomorphic framing and product value affect the individual and general acceptance and intention to use robots for transporting goods. In addition, we operationalized the perceived value of the robot’s service through the willingness to pay for this delivery service. The data of 189 participants were retrieved in our between-subjects online study. The study revealed no differences in general acceptance, intention to use, and willingness to pay for the service robot. However, anthropomorphic framing and the prize of the transported goods mattered for the individual acceptance of the delivery robots. In particular, anthropomorphically framed robots and robots transporting inexpensive goods were accepted significantly more. As the services of transporting inexpensive products were accepted more, the successful implementation and actual usage could lead to an extension of the acceptance of more expensive goods transportation. This result could be the basis for a gradual market entry strategy that starts with low-cost product transportation like food delivery.KeywordsMobile RobotsAnthropomorphismHuman-Robot Interaction
This volume provides a unique perspective on an emerging area of scholarship and legislative concern: the law, policy, and regulation of human-robot interaction (HRI). The increasing intelligence and human-likeness of social robots points to a challenging future for determining appropriate laws, policies, and regulations related to the design and use of AI robots. Japan, China, South Korea, and the US, along with the European Union, Australia and other countries are beginning to determine how to regulate AI-enabled robots, which concerns not only the law, but also issues of public policy and dilemmas of applied ethics affected by our personal interactions with social robots. The volume's interdisciplinary approach dissects both the specificities of multiple jurisdictions and the moral and legal challenges posed by human-like robots. As robots become more like us, so too will HRI raise issues triggered by human interactions with other people.
The field of robotics has grown exponentially over the years, especially the social aspect, which has enabled robots to interact with humans meaningfully. Robots are now used in many domains, such as manufacturing, healthcare, education, entertainment, rehabilitation, etc. Along with their widespread usage in many real-life environments, robots have been used as companions to humans. With the increased amount of research done on human–robot companionship (HRC), it is important to understand how this domain is developing, in which direction, and what the future might hold. There is also a need to understand the influencing factors and what kind of empirical results are in the literature. To address these questions, we conducted a systematic literature review and analyzed a final number of 134 relevant articles. The findings suggest that anthropomorphic and zoomorphic robots are more popular as human companions, while there is a lack of interest in functional and caricatured robots. Also, human-like and animal-like features are implemented more in companion robots. Studies rarely exploit the mobility available in these robots in companionship scenarios, especially in outdoor settings. In addition to that, co-existence and co-performance-based implementation with humans have been observed rarely. Based on the results, we propose a future research agenda that includes thematic, theoretical, methodological, and technological agendas. This study will help us understand the current state and usage of robotic companions which will then potentially aid in determining how HRC can be leveraged and integrated more seamlessly into human lives for better effectiveness.
In this paper, we report on methodological insights gained from a workshop in which we collaborated with theater professionals to enact situated encounters between humans and robots on a mixed reality stage combining VR with real-life interaction. We deployed the skills of theater professionals to investigate the behaviors of humans encountering robots to speculate about the kind of interactions that may result from encountering robots in supermarket settings. The mixed reality stage made it possible to adapt the robot’s morphology quickly, as well as its movement and perceptual capacities, to investigate how this together co-determines possibilities for interaction. This setup allowed us to follow the interactions simultaneously from different perspectives, including the robot’s, which provided the basis for a collective phenomenological analysis of the interactions. Our work contributes to approaches to HRI that do not work towards identifying communicative behaviors that can be universally applied but instead work towards insights that can be used to develop HRI that is emergent, and situation- and robot-specific. Furthermore, it supports a more-than-human-design approach that takes the fundamental differences between humans and robots as a starting point for the creative development of new kinds of communication and interaction.
Mobile telepresence robots can help reduce loneliness by facilitating people to visit each other and have more social presence than visiting via video or audio calls. However, using new technology can be challenging for many older adults. In this paper, we examine how older adults use and want to use mobile telepresence robots, how these robots affect their social connection, and how they can be improved for older adults’ use. We placed a mobile telepresence robot in the home of older adult primary participants ( N = 7; age 60+) for 7 months and facilitated monthly activities between them and a secondary participant ( N = 8; age 18+) of their choice. Participants used the robots as they liked between monthly activities. We collected diary entries and monthly interviews from primary participants and a final interview from secondary participants. Results indicate that older adults found many creative uses for the robots, including conversations, board games, and hide ‘n’ seek. Several participants felt more socially connected with others and a few had improved their comfort with technology because of their use of the robot. They also suggested design recommendations and updates for the robots related to size, mobility, and more, which can help practitioners improve robots for older adults’ use.
Due to current technology advancements, researchers have been concentrating more on robots in an attempt to enhance human existence. Home automation and intelligence are growing in today's houses. People may simplify their lives and save time with home automation. Though the market is still young and developing, domestic robots are finding their way into people's homes and daily lives. Nonetheless, growth will be needed and the use of domestic robots is changing. The objective is to develop a robotic floor cleaner that uses border analysis to automatically cover a given room or area. The proposed work is named snoop dog as the device will walk in the house like a dog patrolling his territory. The device travels around the room in a zigzag pattern. To cover the whole room, the system detects boundaries using ultrasonic sensors and responds appropriately. In order to collect dust, the device also features a vacuum suction cleaner attached to its rear. Initially, the robot locates a corner and activates the vacuum. After then, it covers the entire region in a zigzag pattern. It functions best in a room free of obstacles, however this problem might be resolved in future enhancement.
This paper addresses the colonialist values at the foundation of Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot Atlas and contemporary robotics, generally, through an analysis of its dance video ‘Do You Love Me?’. This paper focuses on the concepts of ‘extractivism’ and ‘recognition’ to reveal how colonialist logic guides the human-robot relationship. I argue that Atlas is a new, posthuman colonial subject that has emerged in contemporary society and that, despite not having a sense of self and thus dodging ethical criticisms, robots such as Atlas display the succession and replication of colonial logic and practices. In other words, the desire for a colonial utopia—where we humans construct and rule the world based on the oppression and extraction of less-than-human others—haunts the robot that dances for your love. This paper thus problematizes the prevalence of colonialism in robotics and calls for reflection on the development of today’s robotics deeper than the symptoms of racism, sexism, and capitalism. Furthermore, I demonstrate how extraction as a dispossessing, dehumanizing force, and recognition as framing of false identity are two major mechanisms of colonialism that work closely together. Through the two tactics, colonialism not only serves capitalism but also deceptively obscures its existence.
Diverse and adaptable modes of complex motion observed at different scales in living creatures are challenging to reproduce in robotic systems. Achieving dexterous movement in conventional robots can be difficult due to the many limitations of applying rigid materials. Robots based on soft materials are inherently deformable, compliant, adaptable, and adjustable, making soft robotics conducive to creating machines with complicated actuation and motion gaits. This review examines the mechanisms and modalities of actuation deformation in materials that respond to various stimuli. Then, strategies based on composite materials are considered to build toward actuators that combine multiple actuation modes for sophisticated movements. Examples across literature illustrate the development of soft actuators as free‐moving, entirely soft‐bodied robots with multiple locomotion gaits via careful manipulation of external stimuli. The review further highlights how the application of soft functional materials into robots with rigid components further enhances their locomotive abilities. Finally, taking advantage of the shape‐morphing properties of soft materials, reconfigurable soft robots have shown the capacity for adaptive gaits that enable transition across environments with different locomotive modes for optimal efficiency. Overall, soft materials enable varied multimodal motion in actuators and robots, positioning soft robotics to make real‐world applications for intricate and challenging tasks.
Robo-advisors, also known as robo-advisory services, significantly reshape customer service in financial advisory industries, transforming retail investor markets by substituting human financial advisory experts with artificial intelligence empowered services. However, existing literature remains scattered across disciplines, with theories on financial customer service predominantly focused on Internet banking, neglecting artificial intelligence empowered interactions. Thus, service providers need a framework for implementing robo-advisors in frontline service and researchers require an advanced agenda to stimulate future research. Through a systematic, interdisciplinary literature review based on Belanche et al.’s service robot framework, this article contextualizes service robot theories into financial advisory services, synthesizing knowledge on artificial intelligence empowered customer service. We contribute to literature on service robots by contextualizing, refining, and extending the original framework by Belanche et al. and by developing a research agenda with critical perspectives. Moreover, the study yields practical and theoretical insights into artificial intelligence empowered financial advisory services.
In this study, we have reviewed the possible negative side effects (NSEs) of existing artificial intelligence (AI) secretarial services and propose a task performance method that can mitigate these effects. An AI assistant is a voice user interface (VUI) that combines voice recognition with AI technology to support self-learning. When a user encounters the unintended behavior of an AI agent or they cannot predict all the outcomes of using an agent at the development stage, NSEs may occur. Reducing NSEs in AI has been emerging as a major research task, while there is a lack of research on applications and solutions regarding AI secretaries. In this study, we performed a user interface (UI) analysis of actual services; designed NSE mitigation task execution methods; and developed three prototypes: A-existing AI secretarial method, B-confirmation request method, and C-question guidance method. The usability assessment comprised these factors: efficiency, flexibility, meaningfulness, accuracy, trust, error count, and task execution time. Prototype C showed higher efficiency, flexibility, meaningfulness, accuracy, and trust than prototypes A and B did, with B showing higher error counts and task execution times. Most users preferred prototype C since it presented a verifiable option that enabled tasks to be quickly executed with short commands. The results of this study can be used as basic data for research related to the NSEs of using AI and be used as a reference in designing and evaluating AI services.KeywordsAI assistantNegative side effectsAI system usability
Designing the ejection system for injection molds is a time-consuming task that requires a significant amount of human involvement. In addition, the current shortage of skilled workers coupled with the increasing demand for customized products poses a major challenge to the ejection system design process and makes human knowledge essential to the design process. Thus, this work proposes a novel human-machine learning approach for an automated design process. To make the human knowledge readable for the machine, we quantify the knowledge and fit it into a positioning model. This model is the key component of the developed expert system that supports the human in the design process. In particular, the machine model recommends ejection element positions to the human who gives feedback on the proposed positions. This feedback is used for training the positioning model. By allowing the human to make the final decision, we also prevent the creation of an ejection system that fails to function. We show the benefits of our human-machine learning approach to enable an automated design process of ejection system design.
Rapid technological and scientific developments in the robotics field have led to the expansion of the use of service robots in domestic environments. The purpose of the study reported in this paper is to identify the factors that determine people’s psychology, attitude, and intention to use a social robotic system. A new conceptual framework is developed and empirically tested, using data from 347 people, performing Structural Equation Modeling analysis. The proposed framework incorporates various factors related to hedonic attitudes, utilitarian attitudes, normative beliefs, control beliefs, and personality traits. The results reveal predominantly the positive impact of normative beliefs and utilitarian and hedonic attitudes but, also, the negative impact of control beliefs on people’s intention to use social robot systems. Consequently, it is concluded that future clients are not only influenced by society’s general attitudes, perceptions, and prejudices towards technology but, also, by the functional benefits of social robots.
This article argues that because the home is so familiar, it is necessary to make it strange, or defamiliarize it, in order to open its design space. Critical approaches to technology design are of both practical and social importance in the home. Home appliances are loaded with cultural associations such as the gendered division of domestic labor that are easy to overlook. Further, homes are not the same everywhere---even within a country. Peoples' aspirations and desires differ greatly across and between cultures. The target of western domestic technology design is often not the user, but the consumer. Web refrigerators that create shopping lists, garbage cans that let advertisers know what is thrown away, cabinets that monitor their contents and order more when supplies are low are central to current images of the wireless, digital home of the future. Drawing from our research in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Asia, we provide three different narratives of defamiliarization. A historical reading of American kitchens provides a lens with which to scrutinize new technologies of domesticity, an ethnographic account of an extended social unit in England problematizes taken-for-granted domestic technologies, and a comparative ethnography of the role of information and communication technologies in the daily lives of urban Asia's middle classes reveals the ways in which new technologies can be captured and domesticated in unexpected ways. In the final section of the article, we build on these moments of defamiliarization to suggest a broad set of challenges and strategies for design in the home.
To inform the design and development of domestic computing systems, we performed a pilot ethnographic study of the home. The resulting model of domestic activity shows that the implicit design assumptions of the personal computer are inappropriate for the home. Our model suggests that small, integrated, computational appliances are a more appropriate domestic technology than the monolithic PC.
A rapidly growing elder population is placing unprecedented de- mands on health care systems around the world. Cognitive decline is one of the most taxing health problems in terms of both its relation to elders' overall func- tioning and the cost of care. The needs of elders with cognitive decline - for in- visible, intuitive support and assessment - invite a reconsideration of the as- sumptions behind and specifications for ubiquitous computing solutions. This paper describes findings and implications of ethnographic research conducted with cognitively impaired individuals and their informal care networks in 45 households in 5 U.S. regions. Key themes regarding needs and barriers to suc- cessful aging are addressed through a set of design principles which apply across the stages of cognitive decline. To convey stage-specific findings and as- sociated challenges for ubiquitous computing, case studies of four representa- tive households and example concept solutions are presented. The design prin- ciples and technology challenges outlined in this paper may generalize to other contexts for ubiquitous computing.
In this Special Interest Group (SIG) we intend to consider the increasingly popular area of interactive systems design for the home. Aiming to incorporate a wide range of perspectives, the SIG's participants will map out the growing number of research and development programs in the area. Particular emphasis will be given to how home life has been characterized in various programmatic visions and how the CHI community might best capitalize on these characterizations. The importance of an understanding of home life to inform design and future directions in this area will also be reflected on. This SIG is intended to appeal to a broad cross section of the CHI community, ranging from practitioners and developers to computer and social scientists.
In this paper we introduce the idea of organizing systems. Through a number of examples from an ongoing ethnographic study of family life, we suggest that organizing systems come about through the artful design and use of informational artifacts in the home, such as calendars, paper notes, to-do lists, etc. These systems are not only seen to organize household routines and schedules, but also, crucially, to shape the social relations between family members. Drawing attention to the material properties of informational artifacts and how assemblies of these artifacts come to make up organizing systems, we discuss some general implications for designing information technology for the home. Most importantly, we suggest that technologies must be designed to accommodate the rich and diverse ways in which people organize their homes, providing them with the resources to artfully construct their own systems rather than enforcing ones that are removed from their own experiences.
As digital technologies proliferate in the home, the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community has turned its attention from the workplace and productivity tools towards domestic design environments and non-utilitarian activities. In the workplace, applications tend to focus on productivity and efficiency and involve relatively well-understood requirements and methodologies, but in domestic design environments we are faced with the need to support new classes of activities. While usability is still central to the field, HCI is beginning to address considerations such as pleasure, fun, emotional effect, aesthetics, the experience of use, and the social and cultural impacts of new technologies. These considerations are particularly relevant to the home, where technologies are situated or embedded within an ecology that is rich with meaning and nuance.The aim of this workshop is to explore ways of designing domestic technology by incorporating an awareness of cultural context, accrued social meanings, and user experience.
As a way of mapping a design space for a project on information appliances, we produced a workbook describing about twenty conceptual design proposals. On the one hand, they serve as suggestions that digital devices might embody values apart from those traditionally associated with functionality and usefulness. On the other, they are examples of research through design, balancing concreteness with openness to spur the imagination, and using multiplicity to allow the emergence of a new design space. Here we describe them both in terms of content and process, discussing first the values they address and then how they were crafted to encourage a broad discussion with our partners that could inform future stages of design.
This ethnographic study suggests that social structures such as the sex segregation of jobs may impact how different groups of workers make sense of robots in their work environment. Designers may need to take such structures into account if mobile autonomous robots are to operate successfully alongside humans in the workplace.
This paper will discuss the future use of the dwelling as a place for cooperative work. It is our opinion that the development of the communication technologies and the architectural design has to be treated in parallel when we discuss new forms of living and work habits. Our analysis is built on a theoretical framework that is reflected through earlier experiences in IT technology in domestic environments as well as field studies of computer-mediated communication. By taking into consideration both architectural and communication technology issues we have developed a framework of how these two areas could fruitfully meet in new design concepts. Some of these concepts are now being used in on-going projects where new forms of communication in domestic environments are studied.
We are building a home, called the Aware Home, to create a living laboratory for research in ubiquitous computing for everyday activities. This paper introduces the Aware Home project and outlines some of our technology- and human-centered research objectives in creating the Aware Home.
This paper explores the relevance of recent feminist reconstructions of objectivity for the development of alternative practices of technology production and use. I take as my starting place the working relations that make up the design and use of technical systems. Working relations are understood as sociomaterial connections that sustain the visible and invisible work required to construct coherent technologies and put them into use. I outline the boundaries that characterize current relations of development and use, and the boundary crossings required to transform them. Three contrasting positions for design - the view from nowhere, detached intimacy, and located accountability - are discussed as alternative bases for a politics of professional design practice. From the position of located accountability, I close by sketching aspects of what a feminist politics and associated practices of technology production could be.
HomeNet is a field trial of residential Internet use with lowered barriers to use. We use multiple longitudinal data collection techniques, including server-side instrumentation. This paper is an initial description of how diverse families used the Internet in the first five months of the trial, and of variables that predicted this usage. The results have implications for design (e.g., provide more help for adults to get started), for marketing (e.g., lower income people have as much desire for on-line services as do upper income people), and for research (e.g., understand why teenagers' lead family computing).
This article argues that because the home is so familiar, it is necessary to make it strange, or defamiliarize it, in order to open its design space. Critical approaches to technology design are of both practical and social importance in the home. Home appliances are loaded with cultural associations such as the gendered division of domestic labor that are easy to overlook. Further, homes are not the same everywhere---even within a country. Peoples' aspirations and desires differ greatly across and between cultures. The target of western domestic technology design is often not the user, but the consumer. Web refrigerators that create shopping lists, garbage cans that let advertisers know what is thrown away, cabinets that monitor their contents and order more when supplies are low are central to current images of the wireless, digital home of the future. Drawing from our research in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Asia, we provide three different narratives of defamiliarization. A historical reading of American kitchens provides a lens with which to scrutinize new technologies of domesticity, an ethnographic account of an extended social unit in England problematizes taken-for-granted domestic technologies, and a comparative ethnography of the role of information and communication technologies in the daily lives of urban Asia's middle classes reveals the ways in which new technologies can be captured and domesticated in unexpected ways. In the final section of the article, we build on these moments of defamiliarization to suggest a broad set of challenges and strategies for design in the home.
Obra que expone la necesidad de adaptar los adelantos tecnológicos computacionales, excesivamente complejos, a las necesidades de los usuarios.
This article encourages the widespread adoption of an integrated, ecological framework for understanding the origins of gender-based violence. An ecological approach to abuse conceptualizes violence as a multifaceted phenomenon grounded in an interplay among personal, situational, and sociocultural factors. Although drawing on the conceptual advances of earlier theorists, this article goes beyond their work in three significant ways. First, it uses the ecological framework as a heuristic tool to organize the existing research base into an intelligible whole. Whereas other theorists present the framework as a way to think about violence, few have attempted to establish what factors emerge as predictive of abuse at each level of the social ecology. Second, this article integrates results from international and cross-cultural research together with findings from North American social science. And finally, the framework draws from findings related to all types of physical and sexual abuse of women to encourage a more integrated approach to theory building regarding gender-based abuse.
The hardware for humanoid household robots would be available in the near future. As households are unstructured domains and interaction with human users is ambiguous, these robots encounter unexpected situations, so called exceptions. These render the robot unusable, if not handled fast and transparently to the user. Telepresent exception handling gives the technical staff an intuitive interface to the robots and is transparent to the client. We propose a service center for telepresent exception handling, which is directly available and thus allows the use of humanoid domestic robots as soon as the corresponding hardware is commercially available.
As domestic robots become pervasive, uninitiated users will need a way to instruct them to adapt to their particular needs. The authors are designing a practical system that uses natural language to instruct a vision-based robot.
We are building a home, called the Aware Home, to create a living laboratory for research in ubiquitous computing for everyday activities. This paper introduces the Aware Home project and outlines some of our technologyand human-centered research objectives in creating the Aware Home.
The Casablanca project explored how media space concepts could be incorporated into households and family life. This effort included prototypes built for the researchers' own home use, field studies of households, and consumer testing of design concepts. A number of previously unreported consumer preferences and concerns were uncovered and incorporated into several original prototypes, most notably ScanBoard and the Intentional Presence Lamp. Casablanca also resulted in conclusions about designing household social communication devices.
This half-day workshop will aim to build a community of interest and research agenda around extending CSCW methods and technologies to home settings. Relevant issues include the coordination of activities in public and private spaces; shared resource technologies; distributed coordination in and between households and the role of technology in everyday life.
This paper documents emotion as integral to stakeholders' sense making of a key organizational artifact, demonstrating that emotion toward artifacts blends into emotion toward the organization. Multiple stakeholders were interviewed about an artifact of a large public transportation organization. Sense making of the artifact is shown to involve emotion in interpretations that consider three dimensions of the artifact--instrumentality, aesthetics, and symbolism. Instrumentality relates to the tasks the artifact helps accomplish, aesthetics is the sensory reaction to the artifact, and symbolism regards associations the artifact elicits. The analysis demonstrates that sense making of these three dimensions includes unsolicited emotion both toward the artifact and toward the organization. Emotion that surfaces in sense making of organizational artifacts is, thus, suggested to be what links interpretation of artifacts and attitudes toward organizations. This paper lays foundations for a theory of organizational artifacts that can guide both thoughtful research and effective management of artifacts in organizations.
For elders who remain independent in their homes, the home becomes more than just a place to eat and sleep. The home becomes a place where people care for each other, and it gradually subsumes all activities. This article reports on an ethnographic study of aging adults who live independently in their homes. Seventeen elders aged 60 through 90 were interviewed and observed in their homes in 2 Midwestern cities. The goal is to understand how robotic products might assist these people, helping them to stay independent and active longer. The experience of aging is described as an ecology of aging made up of people, products, and activities taking place in a local environment of the home and the surrounding community. In this environment, product successes and failures often have a dramatic impact on the ecology, throwing off a delicate balance. When a breakdown occurs, family members and other caregivers have to intervene, threatening elders' independence and identity. This article highlights the interest in how the elder ecology can be supported by new robotic products that are conceived of as a part of this interdependent system. It is recommended that the design of these products fit the ecology as part of the system, support elders' values, and adapt to all of the members of the ecology who will interact with them.
We introduce the PlaceLab, a new "living laboratory" for the study of ubiquitous technologies in home settings. The PlaceLab is a tool for researchers developing context-aware and ubiquitous interaction technologies. It complements more traditional data gathering instruments and methods, such as home ethnography and laboratory studies. We describe the data collection capabilities of the laboratory and current examples of its use.
LACKING OTHER criteria, we make judgments based on our own culture, values, and experience. The trouble is this narrow point of view isn't effective in the global marketplace. Design ethnography extends the cultural panorama. Illustrating this strategy and trying to decipher its implications for developing products and services, Tony Salvador, Genevieve Bell, and Ken Anderson ponder the relationships between the American family room and the Italian kitchen table, between food shopping and the importance of friendship.
We discuss a way to set up a reliable 3D office scene recognition
and interpretation scheme for a home robot using artificial vision only.
It is a very difficult problem which has been studied by numerous
scientists for many years. We do not pretend to describe the solution of
this problem in the present paper, but simply to express our state of
mind. Our efforts are concentrated on the manner to produce a well posed
problem and on the use of an analysis/synthesis feedback loop in order
to solve it. It is expected to produce a more robust solution than the
visual open loop solutions already available in the literature
The definition of the desired functions and the design of an ultimate versatile personal robot is an ongoing debate. Meanwhile, however, precursors of this yet to evolve species are well on their way to become commercial products. Cleaning robots for public environments as well as for private households seem to be able to provide the breakthrough which the designers of non-industrial robot systems have long awaited.
This survey describes a selection of 30 different cleaning robots, with the first developments reaching back more than 15 years. With a few exceptions we have focused on floor cleaning, in particular indoor floor cleaning. We describe a variety of scrubbing and vacuuming robots which were developed for this task. The described systems range from heavy, large, and expensive industrial cleaning vehicles to small-size, light-weight, low-cost household devices. Thesurvey does not include, however, systems for cleaning facades of buildings, or windows, or production tools.
Although not all of the 30 cleaning robots abovementioned have yet reached the state of commercial products, their number alone certainly reflects the expectations regarding the economic value associated with the automation of cleaning tasks. In Europe only the estimates for the market for cleaning services range up to the order of US$ 100 billion per year. It is therefore not surprising that the cleaning industry and the manufacturers of cleaning devices arerather enthusiastic with respect to the automation of cleaning tasks using (semi-)autonomous mobile robot systems.
Technologies have a life cycle, says Donald A. Norman, and they must change as they pass from youth to maturity. Alas, the computer industry thinks it is still in its rebellious teenage years, exalting in technical complexity. Customers want change. They are ready for products that offer convenience, ease of use, and pleasure. The technology should be invisible, hidden from sight. In this book Norman shows why the computer is so difficult to use and why this complexity is fundamental to its nature. The only answer is to develop information appliances that fit people's needs and lives. To do this, companies have to change the way they develop products. They need to start with an understanding of people: user needs first, technology last—the opposite of how things are done now.
This paper discusses the use of computer vision in pervasive healthcare systems, specifically in the design of a sensing agent for an intelligent environment that assists older adults with dementia during an activity of daily living. An overview of the techniques applied in this particular example is provided, along with results from preliminary trials completed using the new sensing agent. A discussion of the results obtained to date is presented, including technical and social issues that remain for the advancement and acceptance of this type of technology within pervasive healthcare.
The purpose of this paper is to present our design philosophy for
service robotics research and development and describe our current
efforts along this line. Our approach begins with a discussion of the
role of service robotics and some features that are unique to service
robotics. We then describe our design philosophy that emphasizes
compromise and practicality in design. We will use this philosophy in
the design and integration of a new service robot system, based on ISAC
and HERO. ISAC is a stationary service robot designed to feed physically
challenged individuals that is operated by voice command. HERO is a
small mobile robot integrated into the system to provide new
functionality for the user. We will make use of our design philosophy to
solve some of the robot navigation problems and describe how our
approach will help us solve these problems in an efficient manner. Some
problems will be approached by a technical solution, and other problems
will be solved through an expanded user interface and appeal to the
intelligence of the user of the system. Performance of a useful service
with limited intervention from a user at a reasonable cost is our goal
The industrial revolution in the home The Social Shaping of TechnologyAssistive Robotics and an Ecology of Elders Living Independently in Their Homes
- R S Cowan
- J Forlizzi
- C Disalvo
- F Gemperle
Cowan, R.S. (1985). The industrial revolution in the home. In Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, (Eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology. Philadelphia: Open University Press. [7] Forlizzi, J., DiSalvo, C., and Gemperle, F. "Assistive Robotics and an Ecology of Elders Living Independently in Their Homes." Journal of HCI Special Issue on Human-Robot Interaction, V19 N1/2, January, 2004, 25-59.
London : Thames and Hudson
- J Heskett
- Heskett J.