Interacting with Robots and Virtual Agents? Robotic Systems in Situated Action and Social Encounters

Abstract

Research in informatics and the engineering sciences strives to endow technical systems – like (humanoid) robots, embodied conversational agents, voice interfaces etc. – with abilities that should allow the systems to “interact with people in a natural, interpersonal manner” (Breazeal et al. 2016: 1935). While the evaluation of such technologies has a strong tradition in the fields of psychology and cognitive sciences investigating the robot’s/agent’s usability and the users’ perception and attitudes using questionnaires and quantitative measures, it remains unclear as how these results are related to the concrete interactional conduct of the robot/agent, how users spontaneously attempt to deal with such technologies, which resources they mobilize to coordinate their actions with those of the robot/agent, and how the artefact and its agency are constructed. This workshop aims at addressing these open questions in that it suggests an interactional and praxeological approach based on the micro-analysis of video-taped recordings of encounters between humans and robots and a research methodology based on Ethnography and Conversation Analysis. It brings together researchers from the humanities and social sciences who investigate the ways in which robotic systems feature in situated action and social encounters ‘in the wild’.