Operating at a Distance-How a Teleoperated Surgical Robot Reconfigures Teamwork in the Operating Room

This paper investigates how a teleoperated surgical robot reconfigures teamwork in the operating room by spatially redistributing team members. We report on findings from two years of fieldwork at two hospitals, including interviews and video data. We find that while in non-robotic cases team members huddle together, physically touching, introduction of a surgical robot increases physical and sensory distance between team members. This spatial rearrangement has implications for both cognitive and affective dimensions of collaborative surgical work. Cognitive distance is increased, necessitating new efforts to maintain situation awareness and common ground. Moreover, affective distance is introduced, decreasing sensitivity to shared and non-shared affective states and leading to new practices aimed at restoring affective connection within the team. We describe new forms of physical, cognitive, and affective distance associated with teleoperated robotic surgery, and the effects these have on power distribution, practice, and collaborative experience within the surgical team

Robot Sound in Interaction : Analyzing and Designing Sound for Human-Robot Coordination

Robots naturally emit sound, but we still know little about how sound can serve as an interface that makes a robot’s behavior explainable to humans. This dissertation draws on insights about human practices for coordinating bodily activities through sound, investigating how they could inform robot design. My work builds on three video corpora, involving i) a Cozmo robot in ten family homes, ii) autonomous public shuttle buses in an urban environment, and iii) a teamwork robot prototype controlled by a researcher and interacting with study participants in an experimental setting. I approached the data from two methodological angles, exploring how they can speak to each other: I first carried out an empirical analysis of the video data from an Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA) perspective, focusing on how humans make sense of robot sound on a moment-by-moment basis in naturally occurring interaction. Subsequently, taking an Interaction Design perspective, I used my video recordings as a design material for exploring how robot sound could be designed in and for real-time interaction. My work contributes to Human-Robot Interaction through detailed studies of robots in the world (rather than in the lab), focusing on how participants make sense of robot sounds. I present a novel framework for designing sound in and for interaction and a prototyping practice that allows practitioners to embed an EMCA stance into their designs. The dissertation contributes to EMCA by describing how members embed autonomous machines into the social organization of activities and how humans treat robots as participants in the interaction. I make a contribution to the development of EMCA hybrid studies by seeking a synthesis between EMCA and robot interaction design.Trots att ljud är en naturlig del av en robots närvaro vet vi fortvarande väldigt lite om hur ljud kan användas i gränssnitt för att göra robotars beteende förståeligt för människor. Denna avhandling utgår från nya insikter om hur människor använder sina röster i kroppsliga aktiviteter, för att undersöka hur denna kunskap kan användas vid gestaltning av robotar. Avhandlingen bygger på tre videokorpusar som visar i) leksaksroboten Cozmo i tio olika barnfamiljers hemmiljö, ii) två autonoma bussar i stadsmiljö och iii) en forskarstyrd prototyp av en robot för grupparbete i en experimentell miljö. Korpusarna studerades utifrån ett etnometodologiskt och interaktionsanalytiskt perspektiv (eng. ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, EMCA). Analysen fokuserade på hur människor visar sin förståelse av robotljud i naturligt förekommande interaktioner. De två sistnämnda korpusarna användes dessutom som material för interaktionsdesign i syfte att utforska hur robotljud kan utformas för att stödja realtidsinteraktion. Arbetet bidrar till fältet människa-robotinteraktion genom att erbjuda detaljerade studier av robotar i världen (i motsats till laboratoriemiljö) med fokus på hur deltagare i sampel med en robot förstår dess ljud. Avhandlingen föreslår ett nytt ramverk för att utforma ljud för interaktionella syften och en metod för att implementera ett EMCA-förhållningssätt inom designpraktiker. Arbetet beskriver även hur autonoma maskiner kan ingå i socialt organiserade aktiviteter och hur robotar kan behandlas som deltagare i interaktion med människor. Slutligen bidrar avhandlingen även till utvecklingen av EMCA-hybridstudier genom att utforska möjligheten att utveckla en EMCA-informerad metod för design av robotinteraktion

How Humans Adapt to a Robot Recipient : An Interaction Analysis Perspective on Human-Robot Interaction

This thesis investigates human-robot interaction using an Interaction Analysis methodology. Posing the question how humans manage the interaction with a robot, the study focuses on humans and how they adapt to the robot’s limited conversational and interactional capabilities. As Conversation Analytic research suggests that humans always adjust their actions to a specific recipient, the author assumed to also find this in the interaction with an artificial communicative partner. For this purpose a conventional robot was programmed to play a charade game with human participants. The interaction of the humans with the robot was filmed and analysed within an interaction analytic framework. The study suggests that humans adapt their recipient design with their changing assumptions about the conversational partner. Starting off with different conversational expectations, participants adapt turn design (word selection, turn size, loudness and prosody) first and turn-taking in a second step. Adaptation to the robot is deployed as a means to accomplish a successful interaction. The detailed study of the human perspective in this interaction can yield conclusions for how robots could be improved to facilitate the interaction. As humans adjust to the interactional limitations with varying speed and ease, the limits to which adaptation is most difficult should be addressed first.

How Humans Adapt to a Robot Recipient : An Interaction Analysis Perspective on Human-Robot Interaction

This thesis investigates human-robot interaction using an Interaction Analysis methodology. Posing the question how humans manage the interaction with a robot, the study focuses on humans and how they adapt to the robot’s limited conversational and interactional capabilities. As Conversation Analytic research suggests that humans always adjust their actions to a specific recipient, the author assumed to also find this in the interaction with an artificial communicative partner. For this purpose a conventional robot was programmed to play a charade game with human participants. The interaction of the humans with the robot was filmed and analysed within an interaction analytic framework. The study suggests that humans adapt their recipient design with their changing assumptions about the conversational partner. Starting off with different conversational expectations, participants adapt turn design (word selection, turn size, loudness and prosody) first and turn-taking in a second step. Adaptation to the robot is deployed as a means to accomplish a successful interaction. The detailed study of the human perspective in this interaction can yield conclusions for how robots could be improved to facilitate the interaction. As humans adjust to the interactional limitations with varying speed and ease, the limits to which adaptation is most difficult should be addressed first.