Collaborative Research: HCC: Small: Robot-Rooms: Giving Form to Domestic Activity, On the Go

该项目的目标是探索机器人系统如何通过“机器人房间”深入融入人们的生活和工作空间。人们越来越多地使用语音助手和智能恒温器等技术来定制空间并与之互动；项目团队的愿景是使用他们开发的机器人表面技术，允许房间本身改变配置，并与居住者进行物理互动。这种情况可能在许多情况下都有好处：适应促进家庭和个人互动的房屋；根据个人能力和任务自动调整的工作空间，使工作更舒适、更高效；酒店和公寓可以在短时间内适应许多不同的游客；提供各种沉浸式体验的博物馆展品；还有其他许多人。该团队计划实施多个原型，以探索这些可能性，并支持旨在鼓励年轻人进入机器人相关职业的推广活动，并提高公众对机器人在日常生活中的可能性的认识。在该项目中，该团队将开发：(a)一个设计空间，为机器人房间的特征提供可能性，并根据人类的需求和愿望；(b)工作原型，以及(c)深入了解机器人房间如何支持和增强居住者，遵循现实世界的场景。具体来说，研究人员将进行一项用户体验研究，以调查参与者使用快速原型技术与代表两个机器人房间概念的原型进行交互的体验。这项研究的结果将成为开发全尺寸机器人房间原型的基础。正在进行的交互研究将通过评估其可用性、性能和功效的周期来迭代机器人房间原型。最终，在这个项目中调查的机器人房间将证明机器人技术的一种有影响力的形式，因为我们进入了超越当前生产力和游戏概念的扩展，由人与机器之间的亲密合作定义，以及人机交互的新范式，其中交互是与物理上包围人的机器进行交互。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project’s goal is to explore how robotic systems could become deeply integrated into people’s living and working spaces via “robot-rooms”. People are increasingly using technologies such as voice assistants and intelligent thermostats to customize and interact with spaces; the project team’s vision is to use robotic surface technologies they have developed to allow the room itself to change configuration and physically interact with occupants. This scenario may have benefits in a number of contexts: houses that adapt to facilitate family and individual interaction; workspaces that automatically adjust to an individual’s abilities and tasks to make work more comfortable and efficient; hotels and apartments that can adapt to many different visitors in a short time; museum exhibits that provide a wide variety of immersive experiences; and many others. The team plans to implement multiple prototypes to both explore these possibilities and to support outreach activities aimed at encouraging youth to enter robotics-related careers and to raise public awareness of the possibilities of robots in everyday life. In the project, the team will develop: (a) a design space of possibilities for what characterizes a robot-room, informed by human needs and wants; (b) a working prototype, and (c) a deep understanding of how inhabitants are supported and augmented by a robot-room, following real-world scenarios. Specifically, the investigators will conduct a user-experience study to investigate the experiences of participants interacting with prototypes representing two robot-room concepts using rapid prototyping techniques. The results of this study will form the basis for the development of a full-scale robot-room prototype. Ongoing interaction studies will iterate the robot-room prototype through cycles of evaluation with respect to its usability, performance, and efficacy. Ultimately, the robot-rooms investigated in this project will prove an impactful form of robotics as we enter a extend beyond current conceptions of productivity and play, defined by intimate collaborations between people and machines, and a novel paradigm for human-computer interaction in which the interaction is with a machine that physically envelops people.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.