Saturday, 16 October

2nd International Workshop on: Designing robotic artefacts with user- and experience centred perspectives

Robots of varying shapes and sizes are slowly gaining popularity in daily life. Examples of recent consumer products range from iRobot’s Looj1 gutter cleaner to Pleo2, a robotic pet dinosaur. Research, too, is contributing to growth in this area, giving focus to industrial robots, service robots and interactive sculptural artworks, to list but a few broad areas.

Designed for everyday situations, and driven by new usage as well as technical motivations, these robots have, perhaps unsurprisingly, diverged from the robots regularly seen in futuristic, sci-fi visions; they are not the anticipated humanoid machines, but rather relatively simple, even primitive appliances, tools and toys. Moreover, the interactions they afford are often radically different to ones we are familiar with. Indeed, many of the latest robotic appliances appear to present entirely new possibilities for human-machine interaction.

We aim to discuss and generate a more explicit manifesto, aiming to shed an empirically grounded light on some of the myths about designing user centred robotic systems. For example, a robotic system modelled after a human is not necessarily a human-centred design, and an autonomous robot is not necessarily the best system from a user-centred perspective. Killing myths will also include ethical concerns, such as ethics based on user centred design versus the Asimov ethic rules developed in fiction. Overall, we want to start with a fresh perspective of robotic design

Further information on the workshop website.

Organisers:
Ylva Fernaeus, Stockholm University
Mattias Jacobsson, Ugobe Labs
Sara Ljungblad, Stockholm University
Alex Taylor, Microsoft Research, Cambridge