Expect the Unexpected: Leveraging the Human-Robot Ecosystem to Handle Unexpected Robot Failures

Unexpected robot failures are inevitable. We propose to leverage socio-technical relations within the human-robot ecosystem to support adaptable strategies for handling unexpected failures. The Theory of Graceful Extensibility is used to understand how characteristics of the ecosystem can influence its ability to respond to unexpected events. By expanding our perspective from Human-Robot Interaction to the Human-Robot Ecosystem, adaptable failure-handling strategies are identified, alongside technical, social and organizational arrangements that are needed to support them. We argue that robotics and HRI communities should pursue more holistic approaches to failure-handling, recognizing the need to embrace the unexpected and consider socio-technical relations within the human robot ecosystem when designing failure-handling strategies.