About this Research Topic
Presently it is often assumed that, at least in principle, robots and social robots in particular, have the potential to increase human well-being across a wide range of sectors and application areas. At the same time, efforts to introduce such systems into our everyday environments have had only limited success and it is yet to be seen whether the impact of social robots on our daily lives, professional and private, will actually be beneficial. Therefore, there is a need to systematically address and study the long-term use and presence of social robots in everyday environments, where humans not only interact with robots, but also have them integrated into the totality of their lived experiences in everyday life.
One of the main ways to investigate human engagement with social robots in everyday environments is through HRI studies conducted "in-the-wild". While such an approach has certainly been instrumental to, and is increasingly used in HRI research, we propose here to further expand the underlying theoretical and methodological frameworks to address the notion of 'everyday life'. The latter is viewed here as a useful concept and an umbrella term that allows us to address, not only specific application domains for robots, but also the continuity and totality of human lived experiences that emerge through long-term engagement with social robots in everyday life contexts. Placing social robots in everyday settings has often been an explicit goal for robot development; however, the notion of 'everyday life' has yet to be systematically analysed and addressed in this context. Therefore, this Research Topic aims to bring together a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary contributions to further develop the HRI domain.
While the main audience of this Research Topic is the HRI community, we welcome contributions from any disciplinary, interdisciplinary, theoretical, or methodological perspective that would address the subject of 'everyday life' in HRI research. In particular, we propose to investigate the following topics among others:
• Sociological perspectives on social robots in human everyday life.
• New directions for HRI and for sociology/SSH, emerging from studying HRI in everyday life.
• Methodological challenges in studying contemporary environments of everyday life.
• Changing boundaries of HRI studies when locating the 'everyday' in our public/private-, domestic/work-, digital/physical spaces and placing the robot in relation to these spaces.
• Shifting from ‘interaction’, through ‘experience’ to ‘lived experience’, and exploring how these foci relate, and how can they potentially develop in the future.
• Studies that go beyond quantitative and qualitative inquiries, demonstrating the potential of performative research in the HRI study of everyday life.
• Normative and ethical concerns, such as identifying of setting parameters for the ‘beneficial’ integration of social robots into our everyday life.
One of the main ways to investigate human engagement with social robots in everyday environments is through HRI studies conducted "in-the-wild". While such an approach has certainly been instrumental to, and is increasingly used in HRI research, we propose here to further expand the underlying theoretical and methodological frameworks to address the notion of 'everyday life'. The latter is viewed here as a useful concept and an umbrella term that allows us to address, not only specific application domains for robots, but also the continuity and totality of human lived experiences that emerge through long-term engagement with social robots in everyday life contexts. Placing social robots in everyday settings has often been an explicit goal for robot development; however, the notion of 'everyday life' has yet to be systematically analysed and addressed in this context. Therefore, this Research Topic aims to bring together a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary contributions to further develop the HRI domain.
While the main audience of this Research Topic is the HRI community, we welcome contributions from any disciplinary, interdisciplinary, theoretical, or methodological perspective that would address the subject of 'everyday life' in HRI research. In particular, we propose to investigate the following topics among others:
• Sociological perspectives on social robots in human everyday life.
• New directions for HRI and for sociology/SSH, emerging from studying HRI in everyday life.
• Methodological challenges in studying contemporary environments of everyday life.
• Changing boundaries of HRI studies when locating the 'everyday' in our public/private-, domestic/work-, digital/physical spaces and placing the robot in relation to these spaces.
• Shifting from ‘interaction’, through ‘experience’ to ‘lived experience’, and exploring how these foci relate, and how can they potentially develop in the future.
• Studies that go beyond quantitative and qualitative inquiries, demonstrating the potential of performative research in the HRI study of everyday life.
• Normative and ethical concerns, such as identifying of setting parameters for the ‘beneficial’ integration of social robots into our everyday life.
Keywords: Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), social robots, in-the-wild, everyday life
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
