Despite advances in robotics, there are still currently many barriers and challenges to adoption, not least the somewhat flaky hardware. However, it is important that as robotics evolves and becomes more a part of our everyday lives that we make sure that robots, especially socially collaborative robots, integrate well into people’s routine practices, homes, and communities. We welcome position papers from researchers who are working in between or in the areas of HCI and HRI and who would like to work together to find the right methods for studies relating to socially collaborative robots in home, public, work and community settings. Specifically, we need to consider a wide array of methods from efficacy and effectiveness studies, to realistic evaluation, to lab testing, to design and evaluation at scale and in the wild.

Challenges

• Choosing the right methods for studies relating to socially collaborative robotics in home, public and community settings.

• Selecting and integrating methods from HCI and HRI that allow for future repeatability of studies.

• Communication related issues e.g. supporting effective social interactions through cognitive and emotive computing, and through natural interactions.

• Managing the balance between appearance and capability, this includes providing safe physical contact or moving within very close proximity.

• Addressing the level of user engagement and co-working/problem solving with a socially collaborative robot.

• Looking for what are the most appropriate ways for a social robot to collect and manage data about the humans it interacts with.

• Managing differences across regions, organisations, cultures, practices and expectations between the many stakeholder groups.

• Ensuring that our interaction methods and designs meet the challenge of enabling socially collaborative robots without removing the need for appropriate human social contact.