Critical Perspectives in Human-Robot Interaction Design

Book chapter, 2024

Current designerly research in human-robot interaction (HRI) is often exploring how to reframe HRI research toward designerly approaches that are more situated, reflective, critical, and inclusive. While arguably underrepresented in the flagship conference and journal in the field (i.e., ACM/IEEE HRI Conference, ACM Transaction on HRI), such work is concerned to pose and examine deeper critical questions about the design and use of robots in society as lenses into a bigger phenomenon. Connecting with Chapter 6, in this chapter Ljungblad and Gamboa, provide an overview of the current socio-technical discourse around critical approaches in HRI. To this end, they introduce Critical Robotics, a conceptual structure aiming to support the formation of alternative research approaches and strengthen alternative epistemological grounds for HRI research, and propose topics for future critical research in HRI.