Out of Place Robot in the Wild
Envisioning Urban Robot Contextual Adaptability Challenges Through a Design Probe
Xinyan Yu (University of Sydney)
Tram Thi Minh Tran (University of Sydney)
Yiyuan Wang (University of Sydney)
Kristina Mah (University of Sydney)
Yidan Cao (University of Sydney)
Stine S. Johansen (Queensland University of Technology)
Wafa Johal (University of Melbourne)
Maria Luce Lupetti (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
Megan Rose (University of New South Wales)
Markus Rittenbruch (Queensland University of Technology)
Rodney G. Zsolczay (Queensland University of Technology)
Marius Hoggenmüller (University of Sydney)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
The increasing deployment of robots in urban spaces calls for design strategies to ensure their adaptation and to mitigate potential disruptions to complex urban contexts. Our research aims to initiate the discussion of contextual adaptability issues of urban robots by exploring everyday scenarios where their presence would appear out of place. We created a design probe for people to carry in their daily lives, facilitating them to envision the robot's presence and capture scenarios where a robot seems to be disruptive. We collected data by distributing the probes among the research team and conducting a city walk activity using the probe at a workshop. This paper presents factors arising from the collected scenarios, encompassing temporal, spatial, cultural, and social dynamics, as well as various stakeholders that robots need to adapt to. These findings provide a blueprint and potential research directions for future research into robot contextual adaptability in urban environments.