On Making Robots Invisible-in-Use

Abstract

Abstract. A major challenge facing human-robot interaction is un-derstanding how to people will interact and cope with increasingly agentic objects in their everyday lives. As more robotic technolo-gies enter human environments, it is critical to consider other mod-els of human-robot interaction that do not always require focused attention from people. Ubiquitous computing put forth the perspec-tive that computers should not always be the focus of our attention, but that computing should weave itself into the fabric of our ev-eryday lives. Similarly, robots might be the center of attention in some interactions, but might be even more effective when they fade into one’s attentional background. In this line of thought, the current study presents results from interviews (N=19) and surveys (N=46) regarding personal experiences with tools that became invisible-in-use, shedding light upon ways that robots might do the same. We present the lessons learned from these open-ended interviews and surveys in the context of larger theories of making tools invisible-in-use [9], functional [16], ready-at-hand [8], proximal [14], and/or in the periphery of one’s experience [24]. 1