Lessons From a Robot Asking for Directions In-the-wild

Abstract

Robots operating in human spaces need to be able to communicate with people. Understanding how humans and robots communicate about the shared space around them allows us to build robots that can interact fluidly with others. We performed a field study with a telepresence robot and a perceived autonomous robot to explore how humans give directions to robots and how the interactions differ based on the perceived identity of the robot operator. In this work we present some initial findings from our in-the-wild study including: 1) participants were more considerate to the robot in the telepresence condition, 2) participants considered the sensing and physical limitations of the robot when giving directions, and 3) participants were uncertain about the realness or identity of the robot and the robot operator.