In this article, 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 toward identifying communicative behaviors that can be universally applied but instead work toward 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.

Social robots have become increasingly prominent in the realm of physical activity promotion. However, the technological complexity and primarily anthropomorphic designs of these robots pose challenges for their application in everyday settings. This study positions spherical robots as an emerging subtype of social robots and explores their potential to promote physical activity at home by identifying useful behavioral design patterns. To this end, we engaged theater professionals and human-robot interaction researchers in a 4-day workshop, leveraging a speculative design methodology. A puppeteer controlling a robotic ball and two actors improvised human-robot encounters in a staged home setting. These encounters were analyzed to identify instances where the ball triggered physical activity. From this analysis, we extracted nine design patterns that articulate robot behaviors for initiating physical interaction. Additionally, our findings revealed that these patterns could be combined into complex sequences to sustain physical activities, which are experienced as meaningful when framed within a narrative. We discuss the contents of these patterns and their potential value for home-based healthcare applications. Our contribution lies in articulating the potential of spherical robots for promoting physical activity at home through design patterns informed by a performative approach to human-robot interaction.