The Playful Potential of Digital Commensality: Learning from Spontaneous Playful Remote Dining Practices

With one-person households being increasingly common and Covid-19 lockdown policies forcing people to stay home, remote dining has become common practice for many, who take it as an opportunity to connect with others in times of loneliness. Sharing meals online, also known as digital commensality, is a rich form of interaction, where people...

Editorial: Computational Commensality

Social robots as eating companions

Previous research shows that eating together (i.e., commensality) impacts food choice, time spent eating, and enjoyment. Conversely, eating alone is considered a possible cause of unhappiness. In this paper, we conceptually explore how interactive technology might allow for the creation of artificial commensal companions: embodied agents...

Eating with an artificial commensal companion

Commensality is defined as "a social group that eats together", and eating in a commensality setting has a number of positive effects on humans. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of technology on commensality by presenting an experiment in which a toy robot showing non-verbal social behaviours tries to influence a...