Positioning Modular Co-Design in Future HRI Design Research

TL;DR

This paper explores modular robot design as a means to support long-term human-robot relationships through co-design, emphasizing personalization, adaptability, and sustainability in future HRI research.

Contribution

It introduces PAS, a human-centered framework for understanding modularity in HRI, and proposes a community-extensible platform with new evaluation criteria.

Findings

Participants reconfigured robots for different life stages.

PAS framework highlights personalization, adaptability, and sustainability.

Proposed evaluation criteria focus on expressiveness, lifespan, and repairability.

Abstract

Design-oriented HRI is increasingly interested in robots as long-term companions, yet many designs still assume a fixed form and a stable set of functions. We present an ongoing design research program that treats modularity as a designerly medium - a way to make long-term human-robot relationships discussable and material through co-design. Across a series of lifespan-oriented co-design activities, participants repeatedly reconfigured the same robot for different life stages, using modular parts to express changing needs, values, and roles. From these outcomes, we articulate PAS (Personalization-Adaptability-Sustainability) as a human-centered lens on how people enact modularity in practice: configuring for self-expression, adapting across transitions, and sustaining robots through repair, reuse, and continuity. We then sketch next steps toward a fabrication-aware, community-extensible modular platform and propose evaluation criteria for designerly HRI work that prioritize expressive adequacy, lifespan plausibility, repairability-in-use, and responsible stewardship - not only usability or performance.