On January 29th, 2025, URF hosted a very popular webinar, sponsored by the Centre for Integrated Transportation and Mobility (www.CITM.ca). CITM specializes in helping businesses take electrified, connected, and autonomous vehicle innovations from ideation to commercialization and scale-up.
Titled: "Exploring Human-Robot Interactions: When mobile robots enter public spaces", our expert panel of guest speakers included: Hannah Pelikan, Post doctoral researcher @ Linköping University, AI in Motion
Stuart Reeves, Associate Professor @ University of Nottingham, Mixed Reality Lab, School of Computer Science
Lisa Johnson, VP Corporate Communications and Public Affairs (Global) @ Starship Technologies
Video Recording:
Background:
Although mobile robots have been around industrial warehouses and factories for decades, they are appearing more often now in public spaces and being used for a variety of tasks around 'bystanders'. So how do people interact with these robots when they have not had any training? What are robot designers doing to help people be more comfortable? How can we collaborate to improve human-robot interactions? If you are a smart city planner, accessibility advocate, mobility innovator or technology designer interested in the social acceptance of robots, this session offers new perspectives on how people interact with robots and vice versa.
HRI Academic Research Publications:
Dr's Pelikan and Reeve, along with their co-author Marina M. Cantarutti have published the article "Encountering Autonomous Robots on Public Streets" (March 2024) that was awarded 'best paper' at the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. https://robotsinpublic.org/hri-2024-paper.html
On the webinar, they shared their new framework that will be presented at HRI2025 in Melbourne Australia (March 4-6, 2025) "Making Sense of Public Spacefor Robot Design" by Hannah R. M. Pelikan, Bilge Mutlu, and Stuart Reeves In Proc. HRI 2025:
The authors describe four characteristics of public places that affect and are affected by robot design. Their paper presents these characteristics as part of a broader design framework for informing and reflecting on the design of public robots:
localism—how robot design aligns with the identity, culture, and character the place(s) they reside within
environment—the physical characteristics (designed and emergent) of the environment in which public robots operate
activities—consideration for the various daily, occasional, and situational activities that are tied to place(s) robots inhabit, unfolding across different scales and temporalities
sociability—how people collectively and individually relate to, interact with, and make sense of robots deployed in public places
When Robots enter Public Spaces
URF technology member, Starship, was launched in 2014 by Skype co-founders, Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis. The company is using autonomous robots to make hyper-local delivery more cost-effective, efficient, accessible and sustainable. Starship robots have completed over 7 million deliveries and can be found in over 100 service areas around the world.
After a moderated panel discussion hosted by URF's Executive Director, Bern Grush, audience members asked a wide range of questions including:
Have you experienced vandalism with Autonomous delivery robots? (and, if yes, what did you do about it?)
How do you address ethical design issues where, for example, a human makes a mistake and a collision cannot be avoided?
Can robotic deliveries be performed during overnight hours (11pm-7am) when fewer vehicles and people are in the public spaces? Less congestion, higher utilization of the robotic resources?
Have you had regulation constraints regarding the robot being in an accident. Who is accountable?
What are the main cybersecurity challenges in human-robot interactions?
How do you overcome adverse weather conditions (eg. heavy snow) when sensing robot position and its environment?
Can the robots perform pickup from the customers supporting tasks such as reverse logistics or performing circularity tasks such as reuse/repair/recycle?
Do the finances add up when using auto delivery robots. What is the ROI in comparison to a human delivery driver?
Are there national (i.e US - ANSI) or international (i.e BS/EN/IEC) safety standards delivery robots or the Starship robots are designed to?
Do you have a PMR-related question that you would like to see explored? Let us know, and we will research a response to post in a future blog or webinar! Please contact us with any questions or join us to be part of our stakeholder community.
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