Animated Public Furniture as an Interaction Mediator: Engaging Passersby In-the-Wild with Robotic Benches

TL;DR

This paper explores how animated robotic benches in urban public spaces can mediate social interactions by activating, redistributing, and settling engagement among passersby, using a new affordance transition model.

Contribution

It introduces a novel design and in-the-wild study of mobile robotic benches that demonstrate three distinct social affordances and proposes the Affordance Transition Model for proactive engagement.

Findings

Robotic benches activated social engagement through gestural performance.

They redistributed engagement as spatial elements in the environment.

The study bridged robotic furniture with urban HCI to enhance human experience.

Abstract

Urban HCI investigates how digital technologies shape human behaviour within the social, spatial, temporal dynamics of public space. Meanwhile, robotic furniture research demonstrates how the purposeful animation of mundane utilitarian elements can influence human behaviour in everyday contexts. Taken together, these strands highlight an untapped opportunity to investigate how animated public furniture could mediate social interaction in urban environments. In this paper, we present the design process and in-the-wild study of mobile robotic benches that reconfigure with a semi-outdoor public space. Our findings show that the gestural performance of the benches manifested three affordances perceived by passersby, they activated engagement as robots, redistributed engagement as spatial elements, and settled engagement as infrastructure. We proposed an Affordance Transition Model (ATM) describing how robotic furniture could proactively facilitate transition between these affordances to engage passersby. Our study bridges robotic furniture and urban HCI to activate human experience with the built environment purposefully.