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Nowadays, robots are gradually appearing in public spaces such as libraries, train stations, airports and shopping centres. Only a limited percentage of research literature explores robot applications in public spaces. Studying robot applications in the wild is particularly important for designing commercially viable applications able to meet a specific goal. Therefore, in this paper we conduct an experiment to test a robot application in a shopping centre, aiming to provide results relevant for today's technological capability and market. We compared the performance of a robot and a human in promoting food samples in a shopping centre, a well known commercial application, and then analysed the effects of the type of engagement used to achieve this goal. Our results show that the robot is able to engage customers similarly to a human as expected. However unexpectedly, while an actively engaging human was able to perform better than a passively engaging human, we found the opposite effect for the robot. In this paper we investigate this phenomenon, with possible explanation ready to be explored and tested in subsequent research.

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Deploying social robots applications in public spaces for conducting in the wild studies is a significant challenge but critical to the advancement of social robotics.Real world environments are complex, dynamic, and uncertain. Human-Robot interactions can be unstructured and unanticipated. In addition, when the robot is intended to be a shared public resource, management issues such as user access and user privacy arise, leading to design choices that can impact on users' trust and the adoption of the designed system. In this paper we propose a user registration and login system for a social robot and report on people's preferences when registering their personal details with the robot to access services. This study is the first iteration of a larger body of work investigating potential use cases for the Pepper social robot at a government managed centre for startups and innovation. We prototyped and deployed a system for user registration with the robot, which gives users control over registering and accessing services with either face recognition technology or a QR code. The QR code played a critical role in increasing the number of users adopting the technology. We discuss the need to develop social robot applications that responsibly adhere to privacy principles, are inclusive, and cater for a broad spectrum of people.

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