Designing for Casual Human-Robot Collaboration in Urban Public Spaces

Abstract

Robots are evolving beyond their traditional roles in controlled environments and are increasingly being deployed in dynamic public urban spaces (e.g., delivery robots). To ensure smooth deployment in these settings, robots must navigate around people and respond to unpredictable situations in which they may experience operational difficulties and require human assistance. Unlike robots in relatively static environments such as laboratories or domestic settings, urban robots encounter a diverse public, most of whom are bystanders without a pre-determined intention to interact. This shifts the dynamics of human–robot collaboration, giving rise to what I term casual human–robot collaboration: forms of collaboration that emerge spontaneously during encounters. These contextual and relational shifts necessitate tailored strategies to facilitate spontaneous interactions between urban robots and bystanders.

This thesis aims to develop interaction strategies that facilitate casual collaboration between urban robots and bystanders. First, an online ethnography study was conducted to identify opportunities and gain preliminary insights into how casual collaboration may emerge. The thesis then adopts a research-through-design approach, beginning with bodystorming to generate design considerations. These considerations inform design concepts evaluated in three empirical case studies, including VR lab studies and an in-the-wild field study. The studies examine three scenarios: human–robot spatial conflicts, robot–environment misalignments, and robot technological limitations.

This thesis contributes to HCI and HRI in four ways: it identifies design opportunities for casual human–robot collaboration; presents design artefacts and reflections through the RtD process; provides empirical insights into how people engage with these concepts; and offers a conceptual framing for understanding casual human–robot collaboration in public spaces.