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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.
... Several robotic technologies are dedicated to enhancing our well-being [1], [2], [3]. Some are designed to address practical needs (e.g. ...
... Some are designed to address practical needs (e.g. vacuuming robot that reduces the load of everyday tasks [4], [1]), others are designed to address emotional needs (e.g companion robots designed to relieve loneliness in late adulthood [5], [2]). One type of emotional need that is less addressed despite having a great potential to contribute to humans' well-being is the need for security, i.e. a sense of security [6], [7], [8]. ...
... Specifically in the case of robots, it was already shown that human-robot interactions can involve attachment elements [21], [2], [3], [4], [1]. Participants form attachmentlike relationships with robots demonstrating behaviors that involve availability, support, acceptance, and responsiveness. ...
... Type 3.3 covers 6% of the papers published at the HRI conference (36 out of 571). Type 3.3 studies investigate robots considering various types of social dynamics including family dynamics (10 out of 37 Type 3.3 papers) [174], [186], [207]- [212], social dynamics in organizations/workplaces (7/37) [206], [213]- [217], gender dynamics (7/37) [207], [218]- [222], and racism (1/37) [223]. For example, a group of Type 3.3 studies showed how robotic vacuum cleaners changed the cleaning routines and division of labor among family members, which has been developed based on family dynamics in home settings [207]- [209]. ...
... Type 3.3 covers 6% of the papers published at the HRI conference (36 out of 571). Type 3.3 studies investigate robots considering various types of social dynamics including family dynamics (10 out of 37 Type 3.3 papers) [174], [186], [207]- [212], social dynamics in organizations/workplaces (7/37) [206], [213]- [217], gender dynamics (7/37) [207], [218]- [222], and racism (1/37) [223]. For example, a group of Type 3.3 studies showed how robotic vacuum cleaners changed the cleaning routines and division of labor among family members, which has been developed based on family dynamics in home settings [207]- [209]. ...
... Type 3.3 studies investigate robots considering various types of social dynamics including family dynamics (10 out of 37 Type 3.3 papers) [174], [186], [207]- [212], social dynamics in organizations/workplaces (7/37) [206], [213]- [217], gender dynamics (7/37) [207], [218]- [222], and racism (1/37) [223]. For example, a group of Type 3.3 studies showed how robotic vacuum cleaners changed the cleaning routines and division of labor among family members, which has been developed based on family dynamics in home settings [207]- [209]. Type 3.3 studies also consider complex power issues such as gender and race. ...
... A wealth of prior research has explored people's experiences and attitudes when interacting with different service robots [21,53,66], such as domestic vacuum robots [22,28,56], delivery robots [37,41,47], and drones [20,26,42]. For example, Forlizzi and Disalvo [28] conducted ethnographic studies with 14 families to explore the effects of a Roomba vacuum robot on home ecology. ...
... A wealth of prior research has explored people's experiences and attitudes when interacting with different service robots [21,53,66], such as domestic vacuum robots [22,28,56], delivery robots [37,41,47], and drones [20,26,42]. For example, Forlizzi and Disalvo [28] conducted ethnographic studies with 14 families to explore the effects of a Roomba vacuum robot on home ecology. They found that the adoption of Roomba changed people's cleaning practices by enabling multitasking and planned cleaning, as well as influencing the roles of family members in housekeeping by engaging men and children in cleaning. ...
... Similar to sighted users [28,36], most participants (e.g., Ara, Ahmed, Kat) used service robots because they were convenient and time-saving, enabling multitasking. More importantly, the service robots enabled participants to accomplish tasks that were originally difficult or impossible for them. ...
Mobile service robots have become increasingly ubiquitous. However, these robots can pose potential accessibility issues and safety concerns to people with visual impairments (PVI). We sought to explore the challenges faced by PVI around mainstream mobile service robots and identify their needs. Seventeen PVI were interviewed about their experiences with three emerging robots: vacuum robots, delivery robots, and drones. We comprehensively investigated PVI's robot experiences by considering their different roles around robots -- direct users and bystanders. Our study highlighted participants' challenges and concerns about the accessibility, safety, and privacy issues around mobile service robots. We found that the lack of accessible feedback made it difficult for PVI to precisely control, locate, and track the status of the robots. Moreover, encountering mobile robots as bystanders confused and even scared the participants, presenting safety and privacy barriers. We further distilled design considerations for more accessible and safe robots for PVI.
... However, urban robotic interfaces differ from previously evaluated urban interfaces, not only in terms of mobility but also in terms of their increasing level of agency (Cila et al., 2017). While robots have been studied in the workplace and domestic context (Mutlu and Forlizzi, 2008;Forlizzi and DiSalvo, 2006), less is known about the implications of robots and their interfaces in the urban context. To inform the design of urban robotic interfaces and generate knowledge of how they can be successfully integrated into the urban fabric, we formulate the following question: ...
... direction of movement) (Owensby et al., 2018). Further, similar to domestic robots (Forlizzi and DiSalvo, 2006), research has shown that urban robots can provoke social interactions and trigger emotional responses (Hoggenmueller et al., 2020b). Assigning emotional cues to robots can thereby increase their social acceptance (Birnbaum et al., 2016;Koschate et al., 2016), as humans tend to interact with them as they would with living beings (Cauchard et al., 2016). ...
... Our chosen scenario is motivated by recent reports around the deployment of patrolling robots in urban neighbourhoods, as well as endeavours from the industry to make personal urban robots, such as cargo robots (Holley, 2019), available for the mainstream. This hints at a future in which we will see a rise of social robots not only in the well researched contexts of the domestic home (Forlizzi and DiSalvo, 2006) and busy (semi)-public spaces (e.g. airports) (Foster et al., 2018), but increasingly on the street in residential areas. ...
The contemporary city is increasingly mediated by computing and automation, promising to improve the quality of urban life. Urban robots represent the next generation of urban technologies, which are capable of sensing, autonomously operating and physically manipulating the urban environment. However, while research in engineering led the foundation for the technological development of urban robots, their human-centred design, including the design of the interfaces to facilitate encounters and interactions between humans and urban robots, has been less explored. Furthermore, it remains an open question how to systematically prototype these complex technologies in urban environments. The research aim of this thesis is to advance the understanding of the design space of urban robotic interfaces. To achieve this aim, this publication-based thesis employs a research in and through design approach, using methods from human-computer interaction. To seek a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges of designing urban robotic interfaces, existing urban interfaces and new ones emerging out of the intrinsic characteristics of urban robots are reviewed and classified. This review lays the foundation for the two implemented case studies, which form the core part of this thesis: First, a slow-moving urban robot that draws with chalk on the ground was designed and deployed as an urban probe to explore the potential of physicalised displays, and to investigate social interactions around urban robots. For the second case study, we guided the design of a low-resolution lighting display for a fully functional shared autonomous vehicle. The case studies consist of two empirical studies each, which were conducted in the wild and in the lab, respectively. The findings that emerged from this research expand the design space of urban robotic interfaces and shed light on the challenges in prototyping by offering conceptual, empirical and methodological contributions.
... Vacuuming robots are well researched and even though these are fairly 'stupid' machines for a manual task, studies have identifed social elements in how they become integrated into households. People enjoy personalizing their Roomba robot [69], it infuences the social practices of housekeeping, is given names, cleaning becomes a social activity [28], and people talk to Roomba robots as if it was a pet or teddy-bear. Various HRI studies observed how humans interpret robot behavior, ascribing agency and intentionality even to simple robots, thereby granting the robot a proto-social status. ...
... Nevertheless, given the Roomba has been shown to be a useful household tool [28,69] and blending well into family lives, we saw this as a missed opportunity. The starting point for our work thus was to address the need for a foor cleaning robot while serving the needs of residents afected by dementia and explicitly designing a social role for the robot. ...
... Novel functionally assistive robots to be introduced in care homes and sharing space with residents, thus have to be approached as social actors, taking into account the residents' cognitive and emotional needs and reactions. Diferent from studies on Roomba [28,69] that found social agency for a non-social robot design, our design approach intentionally aimed at the ascription of social agency onto our robot Sanne, and invited playfulness. This design strategy was confrmed by reactions in our study, which spanned from playful reactions and approaches, laughs, to ironic smirks and jokes. ...
... Fink Towards happy housework: scenario-based experience design for household cleaning robotic system 3 social activities with a robot [20]. Similarly, Forlizzi's work uncovers that cleaning robots may affect family relationships by changing who cleans and how he/she cleans [21]. Families would be proud to own and show off an intelligent cleaning robot to friends; they may explore how to use it together, watch it work together and even do other housework together [21]. ...
... Similarly, Forlizzi's work uncovers that cleaning robots may affect family relationships by changing who cleans and how he/she cleans [21]. Families would be proud to own and show off an intelligent cleaning robot to friends; they may explore how to use it together, watch it work together and even do other housework together [21]. A cleaning robot can transform the cleaning task into a social activity, including the entire household [22]. ...
INTRODUCTION: In the interwoven trend of the experience economy and advanced information technology, user experience becomes the substantial value of an interactive system. As one of the early innovations of a smart home, the current design of household cleaning robots is still driven by technology with a focus on pragmatic quality rather than the experiential value of a robotic system.OBJECTIVES: This paper aims to uplift the design vision of a cleaning robot from an automatic household appliance towards a meaningful robotic system engaging users in happy housework.METHODS: Theoretically, experience design and scenario-based design methods were combined into a specific design framework for domestic cleaning robotic systems. Based on the user study and technology trend analysis, we first set three experience goals (immersion, trust, and inspiration) to drive the design process, then chose 3D point cloud and AI recognition as backup technologies and afterwards extracted three main design scenarios (scanning and mapping, intelligent cleaning, and live control).RESULTS: The design features multi-view switching, a combination of animation rendering and real scene, fixed-point cleaning, map management, lens control and flexible remote, and shooting modes are proposed. Seventy-one participants evaluated the concept with online AttrakDiff questionnaires. The results indicate the targeted experience is fulfilled in the design concept.CONCLUSION: By integrating experience design and scenario-based design methods with technology trend analysis, designers can envision experiential scenarios of meaningful life and potentially expand the design opportunity space of interactive systems.
... Adapting one's home to Roomba is not a one-time task; it is an ongoing process. Users must remain vigilant and remember that Roomba will fail to complete its cleaning schedule if they forget to tidy their homes appropriately beforehand (Forlizzi and DiSalvo, 2006). Even when users have taken these precautions, they frequently have to rescue their Roomba when it gets stuck (underneath a chair or cabinet) (Sung et al., 2007). ...
... Although users generally seem to appreciate having these robots vacuum their homes (Forlizzi and DiSalvo, 2006), it is uncertain whether they save any time at all. Indeed, Roomba cannot clean floors as effectively as a human with a manual vacuum cleaner (Vaussard et al., 2014). ...
Housework is hard work. Keeping our homes clean, tidy and comfortable takes effort and every moment we spend on housework (that we would prefer to avoid) means we have less time to devote to our private lives. Over the past two decades, numerous companies have created robots designed to relieve their owners of housework. Having robots take care of housework for us, it seems, would enable us to focus our energy at home on private pursuits we find valuable, such as spending quality time with our loved ones, recreation, and relaxation. Although this line of reasoning helps explain why domestic robots are in high demand, this article will contest its validity throughout. By drawing from historical accounts of older, ostensibly labour-saving domestic technologies, it will argue that we should expect domestic robots to alter the nature of housework rather than reduce the need for it. Overall, it will argue that domestic robots change what needs to be done for their owners to enjoy their private lives.
... Commercial robots are becoming more integrated into our daily human lives, such as robotic cleaners at home [1], automatic drone delivery services [2], and collaborative robots in manufacturing [3]. As robots become more integrated with human environment, where many operations are designed to be executed by two arms, several robots have been designed to mimic these human two-arm operations. ...
... Once the mechanical structure is built, a wireless signal conditioning unit is attached to the linear displacement sensor to transfer the measured data to a remote computer through 1 Certain trade names and company products are mentioned in the text or identified in an illustration to adequately specify the experimental procedure and equipment used. In no case does such an identification imply recommendation or endorsement by the National Institute of Standards and wireless communication. ...
Most existing robot performance evaluation methods focus on single robotic arms performing independent motion tasks. In this paper, a motion gauge is proposed to evaluate the symmetrical coordinated-motion performance between two robotic arms. For this evaluation, the proposed device monitors the relative distance between the two robotic arms in real-time, which is used to evaluate the coordinated-motion errors with respect to accuracy, and repeatability between the two arms. The proposed metrology device is composed of two linear displacement sensors sliding on a linear rail, two ball-and-socket magnetic couplers for mounting to robotic arms, and a wireless communication module for data transmission. For validation, the proposed system monitored the two robotic arms programmed to simulate symmetrical coordinated motions.
... User studies about the Roomba robot showed that the owners exhibited different behaviors from the same robot vacuum cleaner; some gave it a name while it emptied its way, and some treated it like any other home application and did not talk to it [Takayama 2011;Forlizzi and Disalvo 2006]. This implied that the status of an entity's agency is not static, and the predefined and programmed functions of the entity and the perception of agency influence how we behave and interact with an entity. ...
As artificial agents are introduced into diverse workplaces, basic configurations underlying the organization of work
undergo a fundamental change. This implies that the work we do is subject to alteration along with who does the
work that opens new social challenges. Questions regarding the extent of acceptance of these agents in work set�tings as well as the consequences of collaborating with artificial agents on human agents indicate the need to better
understand the mechanisms that underpin a collaborative sociotechnical system. This book chapter discusses how
the interplay between humans and artificial agents enables human–robot collaboration as a new way of working.
Thus, we first focused on the agents and their interactive processes in the system to analyze how agency is ascribed
to nonhuman entities. Thereafter, the results of two experiments are presented to reflect on the impact of attributing
agency to an artificial agent on humans. This study provides recommendations for the design of artificial agents
and organizational strategies in terms of which social practices and changes in the working context are required to
provide possibilities for successful collaborations.
... [6]), and the behaviors of social others with the robot that model the interpretations that users are meant to take. Our study is informed by these prior studies of HRI in everyday settings, including public and domestic spaces [2,3,5,8,10,33]. ...
... Interaction relationship between human and robot, which is an considerable factor in the user experience and acceptance of the product by the user, also emerges in the robot vacuum cleaner. Reporting of anthropomorphic aspects, defined as attributing human-specific featureston on-humans, in research on robot vacuum cleaner experience (Forlizzi & DiSalvo, 2006;Sung, Grinter & Christensen, 2010) and in particular, users' attribution of a personality and gender to robot vacuums is the most common anthropomorphization known to users. It is an indication that it adapts easily to vacuum cleaners. ...
Consumers, whose purchasing behaviors have under gone significant changeswith the technological developments, prefer products that make their lives easier. The importance of internet-equipped objects is increasing in human life. Robot vacuums, one of the online objects that emerged with the combination of electronic device, computer and internet, constitute the field of study of this research. The increase observed in the use of service robots in homes, which are the most minimal areas where robot technologies are used, necessitates research. As a result of the analyzes, it was found that the positive confirmation, which is the result of product experience, has a positive effect on perceived usefulness and satisfaction. In addition, it was found that perceived usefulness hada positive effect on satisfaction and continuance intention, hedonic benefit had a positive effect on satisfaction and continuance intention, and habit and satisfaction had a positive effect on continuance intention.
... The advance in AI technologies enables service robots to deliver services with greater productivity, efficacy, and efficiency (Wirtz et al., 2018) as compared to human employees (Calderone, 2019). As a result, an increasing number of firms begin to adopt service robots to perform tasks in different contexts, such as schools, homes, hospitals, and hotels (Bera et al., 2018;Forlizzi & DiSalvo, 2006). ...
As the role of service robots has become increasingly important in service encounters, existing literature has widely adopted the technology acceptance model to understand customers' acceptance of robotic services. However, it remains unclear how customers' responses to service robots can vary in different service contexts. This research seeks to address this issue by experimentally examining customer-robot encounters in two different types of service contexts, full and limited services. The results of our multi-group SEM analysis show that customers who perceive having quality interaction with a service robot are more likely to perceive the robot as useful, form positive attitudes toward using the service robot, and experience rapport with the service robot in a full-service context than a limited-service context. Our findings contribute theoretically to the literature on robotic services and the technology acceptance model and provide implications for incorporating service robots into the design of full- and limited-service contexts.
... Since the start of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction in 2006, (some) researchers have been concerned with whether user gender might influence human-robot interaction (HRI) [26,32,88]. Today, HRI works continue to examine the impact of user gender [52,69,78], robot gendering [15,93] and if/how these two might interact [25,34,45,58]. ...
Recent work identified a concerning trend of disproportional gender representation in research participants in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Motivated by the fact that Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) shares many participant practices with HCI, we explored whether this trend is mirrored in our field. By producing a dataset covering participant gender representation in all 684 full papers published at the HRI conference from 2006-2021, we identify current trends in HRI research participation. We find an over-representation of men in research participants to date, as well as inconsistent and/or incomplete gender reporting which typically engages in a binary treatment of gender at odds with published best practice guidelines. We further examine if and how participant gender has been considered in user studies to date, in-line with current discourse surrounding the importance and/or potential risks of gender based analyses. Finally, we complement this with a survey of HRI researchers to examine correlations between the who is doing with the who is taking part, to further reflect on factors which seemingly influence gender bias in research participation across different sub-fields of HRI. Through our analysis we identify areas for improvement, but also reason for optimism, and derive some practical suggestions for HRI researchers going forward.
... The current proliferation of mobile robots spans ecological monitoring, warehouse management and extreme environment exploration, to an individual consumer's home [1][2][3][4] . This expanding frontier of applications requires robots to transit multiple environments, a substantial challenge that traditional robot design strategies have not effectively addressed 5,6 . ...
The current proliferation of mobile robots spans ecological monitoring, warehouse management and extreme environment exploration, to an individual consumer’s home1–4. This expanding frontier of applications requires robots to transit multiple environments, a substantial challenge that traditional robot design strategies have not effectively addressed5,6. For example, biomimetic design—copying an animal’s morphology, propulsion mechanism and gait—constitutes one approach, but it loses the benefits of engineered materials and mechanisms that can be exploited to surpass animal performance7,8. Other approaches add a unique propulsive mechanism for each environment to the same robot body, which can result in energy-inefficient designs9–11. Overall, predominant robot design strategies favour immutable structures and behaviours, resulting in systems incapable of specializing across environments12,13. Here, to achieve specialized multi-environment locomotion through terrestrial, aquatic and the in-between transition zones, we implemented ‘adaptive morphogenesis’, a design strategy in which adaptive robot morphology and behaviours are realized through unified structural and actuation systems. Taking inspiration from terrestrial and aquatic turtles, we built a robot that fuses traditional rigid components and soft materials to radically augment the shape of its limbs and shift its gaits for multi-environment locomotion. The interplay of gait, limb shape and the environmental medium revealed vital parameters that govern the robot’s cost of transport. The results attest that adaptive morphogenesis is a powerful method to enhance the efficiency of mobile robots encountering unstructured, changing environments.
... These studies cover various perspectives of technologies at home. For example, one research examined how autonomous, mobile service robots might fit into domestic spaces [31]. Meanwhile, another study investigated user configurations of ubiquitous domestic environments [37]. ...
... Robots are becoming an increasingly integral part of our daily lives, performing functions such as personal assistants, tour guides, and hospital nurses. Rather than working in factories, robots will populate our living spaces as social components [1,2]. As such, our interpretations of social robot behavior can impact our perception and our ability to collaborate successfully. ...
... The iRobot Roomba robots apart from the tasks for which they have been designed [14], are able to perform other actions thanks to the Open Interface that it has, through which it is possible to send commands. This, in addition to the low cost of these robots, has caused them to be used for different jobs [15]. ...
In some situations the communications of a place can be affected, totally lost, or not even exist. In these cases, the MANETs play an important role, allowing to establish a communications point using the different nodes of the network to reach the destination using decentralized communications. This paper proposes the implementation of a Robotic MANET, a decentralized network using robots as its nodes, which allows to move the network nodes to the desired location remotely. For this, each robot has as a core a Raspberry Pi with the capabilities to perform audio and video streaming, remote control of robots, tracking of objects, and deployment of wireless networks. To protect the network, different security mechanisms are used that allow secure authentication on the network by different nodes and encryption of information transmitted between them. All communications are protected through Identity-Based Cryptography, specifically with an Identity-Based Signcryption scheme.
... Especially in indoor environments, mobile robots can be used for many different purposes. There exists studies for military purposes for bomb and mine scanning and demining [1], healthcare services [2,3], rehabilitation studies [4,5], factory and industrial areas [6,7], cleaning services [8,9], museum guidance [10], and other different fields [11,12]. In these frameworks, position estimation methods [13], which are discussed under the umbrella of indoor positioning and mobile robot localization technology, come into the picture. ...
Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) positioning is a challenging task indoors due to environmental constraints and the unpredictable behavior of signal propagation, even at a fixed location. The aim of this work is to develop deep learning-based approaches for indoor localization and tracking by utilizing Received Signal Strength (RSS). The study proposes Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), One and Two Dimensional Convolutional Neural Networks (1D CNN and 2D CNN), and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) deep networks architectures for WLAN indoor positioning based on the data obtained by actual RSS measurements from an existing WLAN infrastructure in a mobile user scenario. The results, using different types of deep architectures including MLP, CNNs, and LSTMs with existing WLAN algorithms, are presented. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) is used as the assessment criterion. The proposed LSTM Model 2 achieved a dynamic positioning RMSE error of 1.73m, which outperforms probabilistic WLAN algorithms such as Memoryless Positioning (RMSE: 10.35m) and Nonparametric Information (NI) filter with variable acceleration (RMSE: 5.2m) under the same experiment environment.
... 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 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, environmental differences were not considered. One study reported that even for robots of the lowest level (e.g., cleaning robots), regarding the household as an environment is necessary, and the influence of factors, such as people, products, and activities, in that environment must be considered (Forlizzi and DiSalvo, 2006). Users exhibit varying attitudes toward, preferences for, and degrees of trust in robots depending on the environment (Huang and Mutlu, 2013;Savela et al., 2018). ...
Since their development, social robots have been a popular topic of research, with numerous studies evaluating their functionality or task performance. In recent years, social robots have begun to be regarded as social actors at work, and their social attributes have been explored. Therefore, this study focused on four occupational fields (shopping reception, home companion, education, and security) where robots are widely used, exploring the influence of robot gestures on their perceived personality traits and comparing the gesture design guidelines required in specific occupational fields. The study was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, an interactive script was developed; moreover, observation was employed to derive gestures related to the discourse on the fields of interest. The second stage involved robot experimentation based on human–robot interaction through video. Results show that metaphoric gestures appeared less frequently than did deictic, iconic, or beat gestures. Robots’ perceived personality traits were categorized into sociality, competence, and status. Introducing all types of gestures helped enhance perceived sociality. The addition of deictic, and iconic gestures significantly improved perceived competence and perceived status. Regarding the shopping reception robot, after the inclusion of basic deictic and iconic gestures, sufficient beats gestures should be implemented to create a friendly and outgoing demeanor, thereby promoting user acceptance. In the home companion, education, and security contexts, the addition of beat gestures did not affect the overall acceptance level; the designs should instead be focused on the integration of the other gesture types.
... If the butler robot does not already exist as the previously cited studies expected, functional vacuum robots have entered many households. Studies of the Roomba vacuum robot have been carried out in the home [15,16,17,41,42]. These studies showed the influence of the robot on the home's ecosystem and the impact on people's relationships. ...
Feeling together and at the same time feeling free while sharing the same roof is a balance that newly retired couples try to reach. Indeed the beginning of retirement is complex, and sometimes, even when both spouses find themselves at home together, some spouses could experience a feeling of loneliness. To respond to this insight, we introduce the concept of “sensible presence robject” - Yōkobo to fill this loneliness gap through subtle interactions. The pictorial introduces and describes the different steps of the design process of Yōkobo as a nonanthropomorphic and non-vocal robot for the entrance of dwellings. Through its expressiveness, Yōkobo is a presence messenger for newly retired couples. On a larger scale, this research is a manifesto for the slow technology trend in which perceptions and time open a discussion on poetic sensibility.
Imagine a near-future smart home. Home-embedded visual AI sensors continuously monitor the resident, inferring her activities and internal states that enable higher-level services. Here, as home-embedded sensors passively monitor a free person, good inferences happen randomly. The inferences' confidence highly depends on how congruent her momentary conditions are to the conditions favored by the AI models, e.g., front-facing or unobstructed. We envision new strategies of AI-to-Human Actuation (AHA) that empower the sensory AIs with proactive actuation so that they induce the person's conditions to be more favorable to the AIs. In this light, we explore the initial feasibility and efficacy of AHA in the context of home-embedded visual AIs. We build a taxonomy of actuations that could be issued to home residents to benefit visual AIs. We deploy AHA in an actual home rich in sensors and interactive devices. With 20 participants, we comprehensively study their experiences with proactive actuation blended with their usual home routines. We also demonstrate the substantially improved inferences of the actuation-empowered AIs over the passive sensing baseline. This paper sets forth an initial step towards interweaving human-targeted AIs and proactive actuation to yield more chances for high-confidence inferences without sophisticating the model, in order to improve robustness against unfavorable conditions.
Anthropomorphe Dienstleistungsroboter gewinnen immer mehr an Popularität. Je leistungsfähiger sie werden und je stärker sie in unserem Alltag integriert sind, desto wichtiger wird die verantwortungsbewusste Gestaltung der Mensch-Roboter-Interaktion (MRI). Hierbei sind Menschenwürde, Transparenz, Privatsphäre, Datenschutz und Compliance im verantwortungsbewussten Einsatz anthropomorpher Dienstleistungsroboter von zentraler Bedeutung. Dieser Beitrag nennt Tätigkeiten von Dienstleistungsrobotern im Handel und bietet einen interdisziplinären Überblick über den aktuellen Forschungsstand zur verantwortungsbewussten Gestaltung der MRI unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der vier Disziplinen Ethik, Recht, Psychologie und Technik. Zudem wird ein interdisziplinärer Bezugsrahmen für die Gestaltung einer verantwortungsbewussten MRI mit anthropomorphen Dienstleitungsrobotern entwickelt und präsentiert. Abschließend werden wissenschaftliche Implikationen abgeleitet und weitere Forschungsfelder hinsichtlich einer verantwortungsbewussten Gestaltung der MRI mit anthropomorphen Dienstleistungsrobotern formuliert.
در سالهای اخیر; تکنولوژی هوش مصنوعی - فناوریهای هوش مصنوعی (AI) بهسرعت توانسته ماهیت تعاملات خدماتی را در صنعت رستوران و مهماننوازی بهویژه هتلهای سبز محور (اکوهتل ها) با سرعتی شتابان تغییر دهد. ازآنجاییکه نقش روباتهای خدماتی در برخوردهای خدماتی اهمیت فزایندهای پیدا کرده است، ادبیات موجود بهطور گستردهای مدل پذیرش فناوری را برای درک پذیرش مشتریان از خدمات رباتیک اتخاذ کرده است. بااینحال، هنوز مشخص نیست که چگونه پاسخهای مشتریان به روباتهای خدماتی در زمینههای مختلف خدمات متفاوت است. ضرورت پیدا کرده است. هدف از بررسی مطالعاتی تحقیقی این مقاله این است که چگونگی پاسخ مشتریان به فناوریهای نوین بهویژه (رباتیک) در زمینه خدمات (کامل و محدود) در رستوران و هتلهای سبز محور (اکوهتل ها) محدود و یا متفاوت باشد؛ زیرا بررسی این موضوع و نقش کاربردی روباتهای خدماتی میتواند در انواع برخوردهای خدماتی متفاوت باشد. روش تحقیق مورد بررسی از نوع روش تحقیق تجربی است که در مواجهه با مشتریان با روباتها در دو نوع مختلف (خدمات کامل و محدود) به دنبال پرداختن موضوع میباشد. فرضیههای اصلی این تحقیق کیفیت تعامل درک شده مشتریان با یک ربات خدماتی تأثیر مثبتی بر سودمندی درک شده آنها از ربات خدماتی دارد. کیفیت تعامل درک شده مشتریان با یک ربات خدماتی تأثیر مثبتی بر سهولت درک شده در استفاده از ربات خدماتی دارد. نتیجهگیری و تجزیهوتحلیل مدل معادلات ساختاری (SEM) چند گروهی به ما نشان میدهد مشتریانی که تعامل با کیفیت با یک ربات خدماتی را درک میکنند، احتمالاً ربات را مفید میدانند، نگرش مثبتی نسبت به استفاده از ربات خدماتی ایجاد میکنند و ارتباط کامل با ربات خدمات را تجربه میکنند. زمینه خدمات نسبت به زمینه خدمات محدود. یافتههای ما ازلحاظ نظری به ادبیات مربوط به خدمات رباتیک و مدل پذیرش فناوری کمک میکند و مفاهیمی را برای ترکیب روباتهای خدماتی در طراحی زمینههای مدیریت خدمات کامل و محدود در صنعت رستوران و هتلهای سبز ارائه میدهد.
The Build-A-Bot online platform has been developed with the goal to enable active participatory design and broaden the participation in social robot design. The platform is hosted on a webpage to make robot design widely available. Active participatory design is enabled by giving the user the maximum amount of creative freedom in creating their own designs. The platform uses a form of gamification that challenges the user to build robot designs that emulate an experience or agency capability. The overall goal is to create a comprehensive set of robot designs that are related to such an attribute. This data then will allow us to research robot mind perception using Machine Learning and neuroscience methods in the future. This work focuses on the development of the online Build-A-Bot platform and the methodology implemented on the platform.
With the development of Artificial intelligence, the connected objects are extended with the predictive capabilities and the character of things can change to “things that predict”. If a connected device is able to embrace a predictive system that not only profiles for scripted behavior but could also use the knowledge co-created by all the other similar devices and their users that encounter similar situations, the predictions can be generated based on that. In this case, a new type of interplay between humans and things called “predictive relation” is created. However, before this future takes place, it is required to find out appropriate patterns to address challenges such as the transparency and users’ acceptance of predictive behaviors of connected products. The research in this article takes a vacuum robot as a reference product for the study. The research starts by collecting users’ daily practice with vacuum robots through 4-day diary booklets. And then the booklets serve as sensitizing tools to envision the possible predictive capabilities and lead the discussion on the acceptance and transparency of general predicting things. From the creative sessions we propose 1) design qualities for the acceptance of the predicting things, and 2) a model of generating predictive behavior that enhances the transparency. Eventually, we also propose the idea of “Designers as the facilitators of the human-robot collaboration”.
AI-based systems, and especially voice-based AI systems, are gaining popularity and set novel requirements for end users. Research has provided first approaches postulating and conceptualizing AI-related user competencies. However, voice-based technology utilizing spoken language for operation has been neglected so far. This study presents qualitative interviews of 12 experts in research, development, or design of voice-based AI and explores the skills and competencies which are needed to interact with VBAI in a self-determined and mindful manner. Analyses highlight that, contrary to existing assumptions and providers’ advertising promises, not only language skills but a wider variety of competencies is required. As a result, ten skills and competencies are derived and integrated into the model of “Digital Interaction Literacy - DIL”. The current paper contributes to a holistic model of AI Literacy using the example of voice-based AI technology. Wider implications for practice and science are discussed.
Mobile service robots have become increasingly ubiquitous. However, these robots can pose potential accessibility issues and safety concerns to people with visual impairments (PVI). We sought to explore the challenges faced by PVI around mainstream mobile service robots and identify their needs. Seventeen PVI were interviewed about their experiences with three emerging robots: vacuum robots, delivery robots, and drones. We comprehensively investigated PVI's robot experiences by considering their different roles around robots---direct users and bystanders. Our study highlighted participants' challenges and concerns about the accessibility, safety, and privacy issues around mobile service robots. We found that the lack of accessible feedback made it difficult for PVI to precisely control, locate, and track the status of the robots. Moreover, encountering mobile robots as bystanders confused and even scared the participants, presenting safety and privacy barriers. We further distilled design considerations for more accessible and safe robots for PVI.
The paper presents the theoretical, conceptual, and technical framework of ‘Re-Balance: the chair that doesn’t know it is a chair’, an automated kneeling chair able to construct interactions in various domains of action. This pet furniture is designed to extend our daily life ecologies and to enrich their interactive experiences both on the physical and emotional levels. A unique acoustic and motion language expresses different personalities willing to create special relationships with human and nonhuman actors (living beings or algorithmic intelligence). The project resides at the intersection of posthuman design and human-robot interaction, studying contemporary multi-species cohabitation and social design modes. This chairbot is thought to be an actual commercial product, as a platform for collective research.At the time of writing this paper, the project is at the initial stages of the development of mock-ups and prototypes for the ergonomic studies and the communication skills of the chairbot via movement and sounds.KeywordsPosthuman designHuman-robot interactionThing ethnographyThing perspectiveSocial robots
À medida que a tecnologia avança, os robôs estão cada vez mais presentes em nosso cotidiano e cultura. O campo da robótica está aberto a contribuições de vários campos, mas a definição do que é um “robô” pode ser enriquecida se analisada como um artefato de design. O objetivo desta pesquisa é promover uma definição mais amigável do design de robôs do que os pesquisadores da área de robótica querem dizer quando dizem que estão estudando ou desenvolvendo esses robôs. Foi realizada uma Revisão Sistemática da Literatura para identificar e analisar os artigos mais citados sobre o tema. Para entender a perspectiva do design, esses trabalhos foram então analisados à luz do Complexo de Funções, conforme proposto pelo Designer Victor Papanek. A revisão selecionou os 37 artigos mais citados, dentre mais de 25 mil resultados de busca em 5 portais científicos. O estudo alcançou uma visão genérica do robô à luz do Complexo de Funções.
Due to an increased presence of robots in human-inhabited environments, we observe a growing body of examples in which humans show behavior that is indicative of strong social engagement towards robots that do not possess any life-like realism in appearance or behavior. In response, we focus on the under-explored concept of a common locus as a relevant driver for a robot passing a social threshold. The key principle of common locus is that sharing place and time with a robotic artifact functions as an important catalyst for a perception of shared experiences, which in turn leads to bonding. We present BlockBots, minimal cube-shaped robotic artifacts that are deployed in an unsupervised, open-ended and in-the-field experimental setting aimed to explore the relevance of this concept. Participants host the BlockBot in their domestic environment before passing it on, without necessarily knowing they are taking part in an experiment. Qualitative data suggest that participants make identity and mind attributions to the BlockBot. People that actively maintain a common locus with BlockBot by taking it with them when changing location, on trips and during outdoor activities, project more of these attributes than others.
Our robot is doing the manual work. As we know that many manual work is done by robot appliances. Floor cleaner robot works in 2 modes "Automatic mode and manual mode". All the hardware operations are controlled with the help of the remote control which is operated by our member. Our robot performs dust sucking, sweeping and cleaning tasks. Our robot work performance can be varied in ranges. 7 DC motors are used in our robot. Four motors are used for wheels, two are used for scrubbers, and one is used for mop roller. Our roller works on itself only we need to give the direction with the help of remote control which works on 240 V power supply and circuit is connected to it.
Artificial intelligence and robotic technologies have grown in sophistication and reach. Accordingly, research into mixed human–robot teams that comprise both robots and humans has expanded as well, attracting the attention of researchers from different disciplines, such as organizational behavior, human–robot interaction, cognitive science, and robotics. With this systematic literature review, the authors seek to establish deeper insights into existing research and sharpen the definitions of relevant terms. With a close consideration of 150 studies published between 1990 and 2020 that investigate mixed human–robot teams, conceptually or empirically, this article provides both a systematic evaluation of extant research and propositions for further research.
Domestic robots and agents are widely sold to the grand public, leading us to ethical issues related to the data harvested by such machines. While users show a general acceptance of these robots, concerns remain when it comes to information security and privacy. Current research indicates that there’s a privacy-security trade-off for better use, but the anthropomorphic and social abilities of a robot are also known to modulate its acceptance and use. To explore and deepen what literature already brought on the subject we examined how users perceived their robot (Replika, Roomba©, Amazon Echo©, Google Home©, or Cozmo©/Vector©) through an online questionnaire exploring acceptance, perceived privacy and security, anthropomorphism, disclosure, perceived intimacy, and loneliness. The results supported the literature regarding the potential manipulative effects of robots' anthropomorphism for acceptance but also information disclosure, perceived intimacy, security, and privacy.
The study presented in this paper investigates the application of the Hybrid Model, which is the combination of the two strategies of the Built-to-Order Model and the Dynamic Eco-strategy Explorer Model, to robotic vacuum cleaners. The Hybrid Model aims to switch the market power from seller-driven perception to buyer-driven one by creating an individual perspective from the eye of users rather than traditional customer segmentation. The human-centered approach established theoretically has been tested with a determined procedure that includes prototyping, testing, and evaluating the proposed customization system for robotic vacuum cleaners to increase the interaction degree with purchasers. In this case, robotic vacuum cleaners have been chosen to implement and assess the hypothesis. Firstly, the successful prototyping of the Hybrid Model requires well customer analysis and habits determination to build well-constructed and coherent interaction between the purchaser and the robot. We utilized a content analysis of robotic vacuum cleaners and elaborative, conventional interviews with early adopters and early majority of this technology in Turkey to establish credible scenarios and product options during the phases of the Hybrid Model practice. The results of the interview were discussed, and the evaluations have been reported.
Understanding the attachment owners can feel to their robot vacuums, which also map and collect data about their homes, is key to understanding the ambivalences involved in the integration of automated visualities in the home. Drawing on qualitative video interviews and observations of people interacting with their robot vacuums, this article identifies three key factors in understanding how cohabitation with a robot vacuum and its particular form of automated sensoria is experienced by its user: firstly, the robot assists with work that we would otherwise do ourselves with the aid of a broom or traditional vacuum cleaner; it is thus often regarded as an extension of ourselves, the equivalent of a cleaning assistant, or even a kind of pet with which you can interact. Secondly, its ability to move autonomously increases the inclination to anthropomorphize the robot as a being with some level of agency and intelligence. Thirdly, the robot vacuum cleaner is a very visible part of the intimate sphere. It has its charging station in the home; it cannot be hidden away in a cupboard like an ordinary vacuum cleaner; more often than not, furniture needs to be moved around for it to run smoothly. This article argues that these three factors are important for understanding people's difficulty in perceiving the robot as an entity that potentially participates in surveillance practices, and to understand the nature of this form of surveillance that emanates from the leaky home.
Studies show that people expectations on robots and their behavior are similar to those regarding living objects, and that users ascribe robots with human attributes, qualities, and capabilities even when the robot is not conceived for social interaction. Actually, the increasing availability of sensors able to capture situational data makes it possible to achieve adaptive systems able to dynamically take into account users’ and context information with unprecedented precision, thus showing some degree of empathy and emotional intelligence. Modern robots can use their sensors, like cameras and microphones, not only for their more traditional goals, but also for classifying human emotional states in order to emulate an empathic behavior, and to put the users at ease and tempt them in continuing the interaction. They can offer a human-like communication occurring over different verbal and non-verbal communication channels. Anyhow, since multi-modal emotion detection is a complex technique requiring a proper combination of all the deriving data, handling it can be very demanding, and maybe impossible to achieve for many machines because of hardware limitations or simply for an unaffordable battery power consumption, with an ultimate effect on usability, which can degrade up to an unacceptable degree. In this paper we discuss how these problems have been faced within the framework of the BlocksBot project and how its Hybrid Distributed approach allows to overcome such limitations.
As development of robots with the ability to self-assess their proficiency for accomplishing tasks continues to grow, metrics are needed to evaluate the characteristics and performance of these robot systems and their interactions with humans. This proficiency-based human-robot interaction (HRI) use case can occur before, during, or after the performance of a task. This paper presents a set of metrics for this use case, driven by a four stage cyclical interaction flow: 1) robot self-assessment of proficiency (RSA), 2) robot communication of proficiency to the human (RCP), 3) human understanding of proficiency (HUP), and 4) robot perception of the human’s intentions, values, and assessments (RPH). This effort leverages work from related fields including explainability, transparency, and introspection, by repurposing metrics under the context of proficiency self-assessment. Considerations for temporal level ( a priori , in situ , and post hoc ) on the metrics are reviewed, as are the connections between metrics within or across stages in the proficiency-based interaction flow. This paper provides a common framework and language for metrics to enhance the development and measurement of HRI in the field of proficiency self-assessment.
Automation technology is developing intelligent health applications to facilitate patients by providing smart health solution. However, plethora of research is required in the autonomous robotics industry to provide smart solutions to hospitals.Hence, the proposed study aims to develop an intelligent automated infrastructure for hospitals, capable of performing several smart tasks in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The developed system will make food and medicine approachable by using a robotic arm on an autonomous robot. Furthermore, robotic arm can be locally controlled by the patient paramedic’s staff. The proposed intelligent robot will monitor patient’s condition by automatically monitoring the vitals conditions such as sleeping, stress, discomfort etc. This proposed system is very useful for diseases where close proximity can spread the disease, such as the covid-19 situation. Moreover, the automation will aid ICU patients by controllable bed functionality supported with patient’s EEG signals or remotely by staff. This research proposed LSTM based neural network for EEG classification and compare the results with other machine learning algorithms. The proposed LSTM network achieve 94% accuracy on self generated dataset. The achieved results are also compared with other machine learning models like SVM and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP). The intelligent navigation feature is also introduced which enables the robot to move autonomously in ICU. In addition to this, it can also establish video conference set up between the patient, staff and family members. The robot can automatically alert the staff in an emergency and assist the patient through an intelligent chatbot.
As per technical evolution and latest trends take into consideration here effective created an advanced system i.e. Design and Refabrication of Advanced Mechanism for Indian Toilet Cleaning. This system uses a controlled cleaning process and can be able to move anywhere so as to wash another toilet. This project uses multiple geared rack and pinion structures to enter into the toilet seat for cleaning. These rack and pinion arrangements are processed by a high torque motor. There is a brushing arrangement for cleaning along with to and fro movement with the help of a combinational arrangement of rack and pinion link. This project uses a high torque motor, long geared racks, geared pinion, pump, and related arrangements. This project can be useful in public toilets. This project is shock resistant as here used electricity for the motor. This project can be moved anywhere with an optimistic design. This project is easy to operate and has less maintenance so can be used anywhere. In this project, there is rearranged management for water cleaning and rotating brushing system so that all other queries can be sorted out. This complete assembly works on stored power so that where there is no the availability of electricity, we can use it according to application. As this system uses low-power devices so power requirement will be less.
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.