The mutual interest between robotics and design is at the basis of the research presented in this doctoral thesis.
On the one hand, in fact, the research started with the support of TIM (Telecom Italia, main Italian telco company) and carried out as part of the projects carried out at Jol CRAB, a lab focused on the theme of service robotics and connected applications of robotics. On the other hand, this interest from the robotic section of the research developed by TIM, was combined with a design interest in the chance of addressing the new challenges posed by the spread of robotics and for entering in a growing research field.
The fact of being supported by a company introduced also a focus in terms of area of investigation, namely the edutainment robotics, especially for children. This interest toward the robots for education and entertainment was motivated by the fact that these products experienced a massive diffusion in the last years. From educational contexts to private use, edutainment products are now widely diffused and familiar. Thus, of primary interest was the investigation of possible opportunities for providing connected services related to this potential network of smart products.
This research, then, focused on the intersection between three multidisciplinary fields (Figure 1.3), that are design research, human-robot interaction studies, and child studies. In particular, two areas of interest and two related research questions were identified. The research was, first of all, focused on the intersection between design and HRI studies. 30
31 In fact, carrying out research on specific areas of
applications, such as on the employment of robots in children education, requires an understanding of what are the main specificities of the HRI field and how design can contribute or might need to adapt to it.
Thus, the first research question addressed in this thesis is “what is (or might be) the role of design
research in HRI?”.
Then, a more specific focus pertains the intersection between all the three disciplines and introduces the second research question, that is “how to design
socially acceptable and desirable child-robot play applications?”.
The first question, whose results are propaedeutic to the investigation of the second, was answered through a review of the current literature about design and human-robot interaction (Chapter 2), particularly referring to the articles published in the proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, which is a leading and top quality conference for the field. The results of this review were used to define the
background knowledge and the methodological approach for addressing the second research question focused on the child-robot play theme. The background knowledge was then integrated with a literature review about the relationship between design and child studies (Chapter 2), and with an analysis of the scenario of the child-robot play (Chapter 4).
Furthermore, existing knowledge about two other intersections was integrated into the background knowledge. In fact, the intersection between human-robot interaction studies and child studies is object of investigation for a large body of research, for instance, a group of researchers from the Human Media Interaction group at University of Twente, is carrying out research on the theme of child-robot interaction and sharing it through a dedicated website and through a series of scientific workshops (Zaga et al., 2016).
Even more, established is the field of interactions design for children, which has also a dedicated conference called “Interaction design and children conference”, from 2001.
Fig 1.3 - The area of investigation at the intersection between Design, HRI and child studies
32
The knowledge from this area of research, at the intersection between design and children studies, is particularly relevant in terms of methodologies and processes familiar to the design discipline and also appropriate for conducting research with children.
A methodology (Chapter 3) was, then, defined by referring to the literature about both design, HRI and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The methodology introduces the adoption of Research through Design as the approach on which the research process was based.
Given the central importance assumed by the projects in this research approach, two chapters were dedicated to two design explorations, namely Phygital Play (Chapter 5), and Shybo (Chapter 6). The projects were reported paying particular attention to the documentation of the design process, the methods employed, and the design choices that lead to the resulting situated implementations.
The results and lessons learned emerging from the literature review, the scenario analysis and the design explorations were, then, subjected to a reflection phase through which the outcomes of the research (Chapter 7) were elaborated. These, were organized in three main levels of contributions, artefacts, knowledge and theory. Respectively, the outcomes consist of: the robotic situated implementations and their documentation, a set of operational principles, and of a theoretical framework.
Finally, a series of considerations about the limitations and future works (Chapter 8) of this research were identified.
To conclude, this doctoral thesis is aimed at contributing to the understanding the role of design in the field of robotics, and in particular in human-robot interaction studies, and to the knowledge about the implications of designing child-robot play applications.