Living With a Vacuum Cleaning Robot - A 6-month Ethnographic Study

Little is known about the usage, adoption process and long-term effects of domestic service robots in people’s homes. We investigated the usage, acceptance and process of adoption of a vacuum cleaning robot in nine households by means of a six month ethnographic study. Our major goals were to explore how the robot was used and integrated into daily practices, whether it was adopted in a durable way, and how it impacted its environment. We studied people’s perception of the robot and how it evolved over time, kept track of daily routines, the usage patterns of cleaning tools, and social activities related to the robot. We integrated our results in an existing framework for domestic robot adoption and outlined similarities and differences to it. Finally, we identified several factors that promote or hinder the process of adopting a domestic service robot and make suggestions to further improve human-robot interactions and the design of functional home robots toward long-term acceptance.

Dynamics of Human-Robot Interaction in Domestic Environments

Julia Fink

Domestic service robots are nowadays widely available on the consumer market. As such, robots have begun entering people’s homes and daily lives. However, it seems that the dissemination of domestic robots has not happened as easily and widespread as it was anticipated in the first place. Little is known about the reasons why because long-term studies of ordinary people using real robots in their homes are rare. To better understand how people interact, use and accept domestic robots, studies of human-robot interaction require ecologically valid settings and the user and their needs have to come into the focus. In this dissertation, we propose to investigate the dynamics of human-robot interaction in domestic environments. We first explore the field by means of a 6-month ethnographic study of nine households. We provided each of the households with a Roomba vacuum cleaning robot. Our motivation is to understand long-term acceptance and to identify factors that can promote and hinder the integration of a domestic service robot in different types of households. We would like to find out how people’s perception of the robot, and the way they interact with it and use it, evolve over time. Furthermore, as social factors were highlighted in previous studies on technology adoption in homes, we shed light on to what extent people view Roomba and other types of domestic robots as a social entity and to what extent they anthropomorphize it. Findings of this research can be used to guide the design of user-oriented robots that have the potential to lastingly become a valuable part within the home ecology. Then, we pursue the idea of developing our own domestic robot prototype that could be used in a household with children. We imagine a playful robot that aims to motivate young children to tidy up their toys. In a first evaluation of the robot in 14 family homes, we study the effect of a proactive and reactive robot behavior on children’s interaction with the robot and their motivation to tidy up. A follow-up experiment explores the possibility to sustain children’s engagement by manipulating the robot’s behavior in such way that it appears unexpected. We further investigate how far this influences children’s perception of the robot in terms of anthropomorphism. Our findings emphasize the importance of research in ecologically valid settings in order to obtain a better understanding of human-robot interaction, advance further the design of user-oriented robots and foster the long-term acceptance of these devices.

EPFL2014

Will Your Household Adopt Your New Robot?

Julia Fink

Domestic robots have slowly found their way into some of our homes and onto the shelves of major stores selling technical appliances. Who hasn’t already seen or heard of robots that vacuum or mow the lawn? As researchers in robotics, we feel this growing commercial success is a great opportunity to learn about robot adoption processes. Leaving the marketing buzz and usual fantasies about robot invasions aside, we are curious to find out how robots are perceived by users. Are robots revolutionizing people’s practices at home? Understanding the adoption of such robots is also central, as it helps to pinpoint crucial factors to be taken into account while designing new robots. Other questions we wish to consider include: What convinces people to adopt them? What stops people from adopting them? What features or concepts should be transferred to future robot generations? To answer these questions, we conducted an ethnographic study that analyzed how people adopted or rejected a vacuum-cleaning robot in their homes [1]. We gave a popular commercially available robot (iRobot’s Roomba) to nine households and observed them over a period of six months [2]. We recruited households with and without children, pets, and gardens. We analyzed cleaning habits before Roomba. We then observed how they evolved from the moment we brought them the robot: at installa- tion, after two weeks, and then two and four months after installation.

2012

People's Perception of Domestic Service Robots: Same Household, Same Opinion?

Pierre Dillenbourg, Julia Fink, Frédéric Kaplan

The study presented in this paper examined people’s perception of domestic service robots by means of an ethnographic study. We investigated initial reactions of nine households who lived with a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot over a two week period. To explore people’s attitude and how it changed over time, we used a recurring questionnaire that was filled at three different times, integrated in 18 semi-structured qualitative interviews. Our findings suggest that being part of a specific household has an impact how each individual household member perceives the robot. We interpret that, even though individual experiences with the robot might differ from one other, a household shares a specific opinion about the robot. Moreover our findings also indicate that how people perceived Roomba did not change drastically over the two week period.

Springer2011

Dynamics of Human-Robot Interaction in Domestic Environments

Julia Fink

EPFL2014