Robot use cases for real needs: A large-scale ethnographic case study

Bodenhagen, Leon; Fischer, Kerstin; Winther, Trine Straarup; Langedijk, Rosalyn M.; Skjøth, Mette Maria

doi:10.1515/pjbr-2019-0014

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In HCI/CSCW, for example, ethnography has been used to understand people's perception of robots [36][37][38], examine users' encounters with existing robots [39][40][41], co-design conceptual scenarios for human-robot collaboration [42], or reveal robots' impact on collaboration in surgery and manufacturing contexts [43][44][45]. To a lesser degree, the field of HRI also engaged with ethnographic approaches to guide technology design [46][47][48][49][50][51][52].…”

Section: Ethnography To Inform Construction Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robot in the Loop: An Ethnography-Based Approach to Robotics and Reinforcement Learning to Support On-Site Construction Work

Wu,

Erdolu,

Wei

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Construction is one of the world’s largest and least automated industries, relying on the cooperation of multiple people with diverse skillsets in labor intensive, physical tasks. Since the 1980s, efforts to introduce robots into construction contexts have mostly focused on automating discrete tasks or monitoring site activities. In this paper, by contrast, we show how robots might be designed to adaptively support the cooperative work of construction teams. Following an indicative review of the state of the art in construction robotics, the paper shows how a detailed ethnographic study of construction workers shaped the design, development, and evaluation of a robot able to assist a team of carpentry workers by delivering tools and hardware during the installation of formwork panels. The resulting prototype is a building companion rover guided by state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning (DRL) methods and an innovative social navigation stack. Through quantitative and qualitative evaluations in lab settings and on a construction site, we show how the rover can adaptively support carpentry workers taking their specific workflow into account. By documenting these technical and conceptual contributions, we hope to bring ”robotically-supported construction” into focus as a domain of interest for the construction robotics community.

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Section: Ethnography To Inform Construction Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robot in the Loop: An Ethnography-Based Approach to Robotics and Reinforcement Learning to Support On-Site Construction Work

Wu,

Erdolu,

Wei

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Even through the number is still limited, there has been appreciation of ethnography in HRI and social robotics [45][46][47][48][49]. Existing ethnographic studies have examined sociability of robots as home assistants [50][51][52][53][54], caregivers [55][56][57][58], and coworkers [1,27,59], establishing usefulness of the method in understanding the particulars of real-world adaptability of socially intelligent robots.…”

Section: Uses Of Ethnography In Social Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Robot Makers

Chun

Knight

2020

J. Hum.-Robot Interact.

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This article is an ethnographic exploration of robot anthropomorphism at a robotics company. It draws on a 10-month participatory ethnography among a robotics company, an anthropologist, and a social robotics research lab. In contrast to psychological methods, this anthropological participatory ethnography integrates all stakeholders' insights, offering holistic understandings of robots' in situ operations throughout the fieldwork, data-sharing, interviews, and analysis. In particular, this article unravels employee social constructions of the company's self-driving factory transport vehicles, "the robots." These robots are deployed across a variety of warehouses and factories in North America. Our results involve an assessment of six teams at the robotics company's headquarters: those testing robots, those developing their hardware and software, and those working with customers. We unpack trends of anthropomorphism for each of these teams and across the company.

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Assistive Robotics Needs for Older Care: Using Authentic Citations to Bridge the Gap between Understanding Older Persons’ Needs and Defining Solutions

Veling,

Villing

2024

Int J of Soc Robotics

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Developing an authentic understanding of potential users’ needs and translating these into usable categories as an input to research and development is an open problem. It is generally accepted that genuine knowledge of user needs is essential for the creation of any new technology. For assistive robots, however, this knowledge is even more important for two key reasons. First, because the form and function of these technologies is still in the process of negotiation, and second, because assistive robots are ultimately intended for a vulnerable population. In this paper, we describe a number of existing strategies to address this challenge and discuss some of their shortcomings, including a loss of data richness and context, the stereotyping of users and a lack of transparency and traceability. The primary contribution of this paper is a novel Authentic Citations process for capturing needs which aims to address these shortcomings. This process involves a thematic analysis of complex qualitative data to derive robotics needs for older people, which emphasises the retention of the original situated description, or ‘authentic citation’, for ongoing sensitising and grounding at all stages of the research and development cycle, and by various stakeholders. The Authentic Citations process adds additional rigour to a process that can be tacit and opaque and can be used by robotics researchers to analyse and translate qualitative research into usable categories. An additional contribution of this paper is an initial outline of a taxonomy of assistive robotics needs for older people, which contributes to improving the understanding of the user as a situated and complex person and can be used as an input to design.

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Robot use cases for real needs: A large-scale ethnographic case study

Cited by 4 publications

References 14 publications

Robot in the Loop: An Ethnography-Based Approach to Robotics and Reinforcement Learning to Support On-Site Construction Work

Robot in the Loop: An Ethnography-Based Approach to Robotics and Reinforcement Learning to Support On-Site Construction Work

The Robot Makers

Assistive Robotics Needs for Older Care: Using Authentic Citations to Bridge the Gap between Understanding Older Persons’ Needs and Defining Solutions

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