Encountering Autonomous Robots on Public Streets

Robots deployed in public settings enter spaces that humans live and work in. Studies of HRI in public tend to prioritise direct and deliberate interactions. Yet this misses the most common form of response to robots, which ranges from subtle fleeting interactions to virtually ignoring them. Taking an ethnomethodological approach building on video recordings, we show how robots become embedded in urban spaces both from a perspective of the social assembly of the physical environment (the streetscape) and the socially organised nature of everyday street life. We show how such robots are effectively ‘granted passage’ through these spaces as a result of the practical work of the streets’ human inhabitants. We detail the contingent nature of the streetscape, drawing attention to its various members and the accommodation work they are doing. We demonstrate the importance of studying robots during their whole deployment, and approaches that focus on members’ interactional work.