The Imperfectly Relatable Robot: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Role of Failure in HRI

Focusing on failure to improve human-robot interactions represents a novel approach that calls into question human expectations of robots, as well as posing ethical and methodological challenges to researchers. Fictional representations of robots (still for many non-expert users the primary source of expectations and assumptions about robots) often emphasize the ways in which robots surpass/perfect humans, rather than portraying them as fallible. Thus, to encounter robots that come too close, drop items or stop suddenly starts to close the gap between fiction and reality. These kinds of failures - if mitigated by explanation or recovery procedures - have the potential to make the robot a little more relatable and human-like. However, studying failures in human-robot interaction requires producing potentially difficult or uncomfortable interactions in which robots failing to behave as expected may seem counterintuitive and unethical. In this space, interdisciplinary conversations are the key to untangling the multiple challenges and bringing themes of power and context into view. In this workshop, we invite researchers from across the disciplines to an interactive, interdisciplinary discussion around failure in social robotics. Topics for discussion include (but are not limited to) methodological and ethical challenges around studying failure in HRI, epistemological gaps in defining and understanding failure in HRI, sociocultural expectations around failure and users' responses.