Unexpected Encounters With Spot in the Wild: Sensemaking as Communicative Boundary Work With Robots

As near-autonomous and AI-embedded robots continue to appear in public settings, their sociality and interactivity is a critical part of the social fabric. This article presents emerging themes from a large-scale ethnographic study of granular-level public interactions between more than 400 people who have an unexpected encounter with Boston Dynamics’ robot “Spot” in a public square in Melbourne. Conceptualizing Spot as a boundary object enables us to highlight patterns of sensemaking as people grapple with ontological disruptions through micro-level interactions; within the self, with other people, or between the self and the robot. Based on thematic analysis of multimedia data collected from this field study, we characterize and offer interpretive vignettes to illustrate this boundary work, including forming and maintaining bodily boundaries, mimicry and mirroring the robot, and testing different ontological frames. A key finding is that this interactive boundary work becomes most evident not in the swift resolution of Spot as a robot or a dog, but in moments of indecision and friction, when people oscillate or struggle with plausible interpretations. By foregrounding sensemaking and the ethnographically inspired question of “How does it happen, when it happens?”, this study extends existing accounts of how embodied and interactive human-machine communication builds relational meaning, engaging with the unexpected moment in public spaces, to enrich our scholarly understanding of the granular aspects of ontologizing in the human-machine communication process.