Why Robot?

I’ve spent the past couple weeks trying to synthesize all of my ideas into a more coherent direction. This abstract represents my current thinking for shaping the dissertation into a degree.

Dissertation Abstract

The core problem of human-robot interaction (HRI) is to understand and shape the encounters between humans and robots. This mission is supported by two main activities for researchers and practitioners: evaluate the capabilities of both humans and robots, or design the technology and strategy to produce desirable interactions. Both evaluation and design are influenced by how humans perceive their robot counterparts.

Conventional wisdom suggests a possible definition of robot include such characteristics as physicality, manipulation, and automation. Human perception of robots, however, extends any technical definition with presumptions of task quality, benefit, and societal status. One traditional understanding of robots depicts them as servants, doing the vital things we humans no longer want to do. We also see them as tools, caretakers, peers, or predators. Adopting any of these perspectives brings with it a value-driven consequence for human-robot relationships. Every choice is also a constraint.

This research examines the dynamics of human-robot interaction by revisiting the field of HRI and exploring the potential impact of adopting particular notions of robot. Interaction arises from a combination of five factors—autonomy, exchange of information, team dynamics, adaptation, and shaping tasks—that present themselves differently as context shifts. In terms of both the job being performed and its outcome, desirability is a useful tension for exploring how changes in context impacts the value of a robot.

Four design themes emerge that might lead to a different way to approach robotic design and implementation. Need precedes suggests greater care be given to grounding design decisions in human need specific to the context of implementation. Ambiguity engages argues that co-created meaning leads to more personal investment. Ceremony maintains stresses the importance of phatics in opening and maintaining communication channels. Relationships move reminds designers that social affordances are not static properties.

Robots clearly hold certain benefits for humanity, but there is a disconnection in how grounded are the decisions to design and implement robotics interventions. This line of inquiry hopes to address the root question—Why a robot?—as it speaks to the state of current and future robotics development.