EAGER: RDSV: Visioning Design Evolution for Human-Robot Interaction

The field of Human-Robot Interaction covers the design, hardware fabrication, and algorithm development of robots that interact with people in personal and public spaces. Examples of these interactions are robot tutors in schools and robots that support older adults aging in their homes. This type of technology requires careful design of robot embodiment (i.e., the ‘look’ and ‘feel’ of a robot), their behaviors (e.g., what the robot says and does), and their interaction with people (e.g., the role it is created to embody).

This is a highly complex problem that only recently has received attention in the field of Human-Robot Interaction. This project aims to create the future vision for the field of Design applied to Human-Robot Interaction with four different activities, organized within a series of design visioning meetings ("Design Retreat") that will be attended by academic and industry experts in Design Research and Human-Robot Interaction.

The first activity will use metaphors to create new ideas of robot design that go beyond existing roles that robots have in today’s society; the second activity will create storyboards that describe in more detail ideas of robot interactions in society, such as their role, how they should interact with humans, and what humans should expect from robots; the third activity will identify existing resources in the scientific community that can support the consolidation of the ideas generated in the previous activities; the fourth and final activity will map out milestones about specific steps to turn the ideas derived from the activities into reality. The research team will disseminate the educational knowledge about this topic by making a documentary of the Design Retreat, giving lectures in traditionally underrepresented schools and populations, and sharing a website that supports communities in engaging in design visioning around novel and emergent technologies.

“Design for Human-Robot Interaction” is the area of work within Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) that embodies design work. This area has the potential for high impact in robotics and HRI fields as it incorporates diverse methods to build robots, with most methods being human-centric and accounting for human values. However, the potential of Design for HRI has not been fully realized and outlined in the field.

There are several reasons behind this challenge, such as the lack of consensus on what Design for HRI means, what methods should be used, and how design work should be evaluated. The research team believes that envisioning a future for Design in HRI can further scope promising new directions that not only provide a consensus on the meaning of Design for HRI, but also develop engagement with societal impact in the field.

The research team will lead a Design Retreat to gather the HRI Design community, including academia and industry experts in design, and map out the future of Design for HRI through visioning activities. The Design Retreat will have the four Visioning Workshops to support participants in imagining and building the future of Design for HRI. The main outcomes of this project are scientific community building, the generation of the “Interdisciplinary Technology Visioning Toolkit” that will be released in open-access, a documentary with the highlights of the Design Retreat to proliferate education on this topic, and scientific publications in relevant areas including HRI and Human-Computer Interaction.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.