Making Sense of Public Space for Robot Design

If robots are to be deployed in public places, we need to understand what factors their design should consider. Informed by sociological studies of urban settings, particularly the work of William H. Whyte and the Street Life Project, we describe four characteristics of public places that affect and are affected by robot design: (1) localism-how robot design aligns with the identity, culture, and character of the place(s) they reside within; (2) environments-the physical characteristics of the environment in which public robots operate; (3) activities- consideration for the various daily, occasional, and situational activities that are tied to place(s) robots inhabit; and (4) sociability- how people collectively and individually relate to, interact with, and make sense of robots deployed in public places. Throughout, we illustrate these characteristics with examples drawn from empirical studies of public robots. We discuss how these key characteristics of public places can inform HRI design.