Dramaturgy for Devices: Designing with performativity for robots in hospitality

This research project deals with the development, application and evaluation of tools that are meant to bridge the gap between robot developers and the end users of those robots. These tools will be adopted from and or inspired by current practices in design and the performing arts.  

This project conducts research robotics in hospitality through the design of a service robot. The main research question motivating this project is: how can we design robots to be pleasant for both guest and employees / colleagues? Secondly this project aims to reflect on the design process of robots and experiment with deploying tools in design methodology for robots. 

The project is divided in four phases, each with a duration of approximately one year. The first three phases follow a similar structure in which one specific aspect of robot design will be explored and developed while deploying and experimenting with tools. The first phase will investigate the concept of role, where we will be exploring suitable roles for robots in hospitality. The second phase focusses on behaviour and we’ll be developing behaviour fitting to the previously defined robot role. Finally in the last phase we’ll be able to deploy the robot for an extended period to evaluate the human robot relations that result from the robot’s role, behaviour and overall performance. 

In each of these phases we’ll look at these design aspects from different perspectives. One important perspective that we’ll facilitate is the one of the end users, workers and guests within hospitality. The techniques and tools that we’ll develop and deploy are in part meant to empower the end users of robots and give them a voice in the development process. In this sense the project aims to be transdisciplinary. At the same time, we’ll adopt an interdisciplinary approach as we’ll also study the different design aspects from the disciplines of, design, engineering, theatre and hospitality. Each discipline brings with it a different understanding and discourse concerning the concepts of role, behaviour and relations which we hope to incorporate and or take with us in the development of research and design tools for robot development. 

Examples of these tools and methods are speculative enactments, where robots (autonomous or teleoperated) interact with actors or end users in speculative scenarios to test and develop interaction qualities, behaviour, role division, cooperation and relations in early stages of robot development.

The fourth and final phase of the project will reflect on the tools developed, turn them into enabling methodologies for robot design and test them in robot design projects at the university.