Designing for Robot Wranglers: A Synthesis of Literature and Practice

TL;DR

This paper synthesizes literature and practice to define the emerging role of robot wranglers, exploring their activities and proposing design implications for supporting them in human-robot interaction contexts.

Contribution

It introduces a typology of robot wrangling, clarifies its complex activities, and offers design recommendations based on literature review and practitioner reflections.

Findings

Wrangling is a broad, heterogeneous set of activities in human-robot interaction.

The typology helps characterize and support robot wranglers effectively.

Design implications improve support for wranglers as individuals and within service ecosystems.

Abstract

Robots are increasingly present in human spaces, such as for conducting deliveries in hospitals, interacting with visitors at museums, and stocking items in warehouses. To ensure the seamless integration of robots into these spaces, a new role in human-robot interaction is emerging - the robot wrangler, namely an individual who is responsible for setting up, overseeing, and troubleshooting the robot. To understand the needs of this stakeholder, we conducted a scoping review that uncovered a typology of robot wrangling across the research literature, and discovered that wrangling is an umbrella term that collapses a highly complex and heterogeneous space of activities, often rendering this labor difficult to characterize and support. To further clarify and understand robot wrangling, we then reflected on our own firsthand and imagined experiences as robot wranglers within our own respective domains. Guided by the scoping review and our reflections, we devise a series of design implications for supporting wranglers directly as individuals and as members of a wider service ecology.