The Robot Makers

Abstract

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.