Despite promises about the near-term potential of social robots to share our daily lives, they remain unable to form autonomous, lasting, and engaging relationships with humans. Many companies are deploying social robots into the consumer and commercial market; however, both the companies and their products are relatively short lived for many reasons. For example, current social robots succeed in interacting with humans only within controlled environments, such as research labs, and for short time periods since longer interactions tend to provoke user disengagement. We interviewed 13 roboticists from robot manufacturing companies and research labs to delve deeper into the design process for social robots and unearth the many challenges robot creators face. Our research questions were: 1) What are the different design processes for creating social robots? 2) How are users involved in the design of social robots? 3) How are teams of robot creators constituted? Our qualitative investigation showed that varied design practices are applied when creating social robots but no consensus exists about an optimal or standard one. Results revealed that users have different degrees of involvement in the robot creation process, from no involvement to being a central part of robot development. Results also uncovered the need for multidisciplinary and international teams to work together to create robots. Drawing upon these insights, we identified implications for the field of Human-Robot Interaction that can shape the creation of best practices for social robot design.
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Consider the Human Work Experience When Integrating Robotics in the Workplace
Worldwide, manufacturers are reimagining the future of their workforce and its connection to technology. Rather than replacing humans, Industry 5.0 explores how humans and robots can best complement one another's unique strengths. However, realizing this vision requires an in-depth understanding of how workers view the positive and negative attributes of their jobs, and the place of robots within it. In this paper, we explore the relationship between work attributes and automation goals by engaging in field research at a manufacturing plant. We conducted 50 face-to-face interviews with assembly-line workers (n=50), which we analyzed using discourse analysis and social constructivist methods. We found that the work attributes deemed most positive by participants include social interaction, movement and exercise, (human) autonomy, problem solving, task variety, and building with their hands. The main negative work attributes included health and safety issues, feeling rushed, and repetitive work. We identified several ways robots could help reduce negative work attributes and enhance positive ones, such as reducing work interruptions and cultivating physical and psychological well-being. Based on our findings, we created a set of integration considerations for organizations planning to deploy robotics technology, and discuss how the manufacturing and HRI communities can explore these ideas in the future.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1724982
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10145262
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2019 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 75 to 84
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI.2019.8673139
