Field Notes on Deploying Research Robots in Public Spaces

TL;DR

This paper reports on deploying service robots in public urban spaces to study human-robot interactions, sharing insights, best practices, and encouraging further in-the-wild research in shared environments.

Contribution

It provides practical lessons, best practices, and insights from deploying robots in public spaces, supporting future in-the-wild HRI research.

Findings

Deployed robots for 20 hours in urban plazas

Shared lessons learned and best practices

Encouraged community sharing via GitHub

Abstract

Human-robot interaction requires to be studied in the wild. In the summers of 2022 and 2023, we deployed two trash barrel service robots through the wizard-of-oz protocol in public spaces to study human-robot interactions in urban settings. We deployed the robots at two different public plazas in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn for a collective of 20 hours of field time. To date, relatively few long-term human-robot interaction studies have been conducted in shared public spaces. To support researchers aiming to fill this gap, we would like to share some of our insights and learned lessons that would benefit both researchers and practitioners on how to deploy robots in public spaces. We share best practices and lessons learned with the HRI research community to encourage more in-the-wild research of robots in public spaces and call for the community to share their lessons learned to a GitHub repository.