How User Presence Impacts Perceptions and Operation Routines of Robotic Vacuum Cleaners – a ‘Stay at Home’ Experiment

For domestic service robots (DSRs) to be successful, their design must accommodate user needs and preferences when working from home. This study explores whether DSR usage patterns change when people spend more time at home and whether active observation of robotic behaviors (which is more likely to occur when working from home) impacts the perception of robotic characteristics. Thirty-one owners of robotic vacuum cleaners were provided with an interactive online questionnaire which guided them through a remote unmoderated experiment in their own home. Participants were asked to report their cleaning routines, before and during lockdown, and their perceptions of their robot, before and after they actively observed it clean and handle different obstacles. Advantages and disadvantages of this approach are discussed. Our results, while still preliminary, shed light on people’s robot operation routines as they work from home. Even though most of our participants owned their robot for over a year, we found that active observation of the robot’s work may impact the way in which robots are perceived. Our findings may have general implications to the design of controlled human-robot interaction experiments, which typically require active observation, unlike most interactions in naturalistic settings.