Towards Community-Robot Interactions

Abstract

Technical advances in multi-user robotics are supporting their increased real-world robot deployments in community and organizational settings. However, interactions with robots in these settings are viewed mostly as an aggregate of individual interactions with robots, separate from their social context. Through my Ph.D. research, I raise awareness about the need for a community perspective to Human-Robot Interactions (HRI) and use real-world studies to demonstrate the conceptual and methodological relevance of community-centric approaches to robot use. The goal of my research is to provide a value framework of ‘Community-Robot Interactions’ for systematic study of the use and development of robots for communities and probe the role of the robots as a community resource having theoretical and design implications for HRI.