Where Are They? The Absence of Social Robots in Real-World Environments

The field of human-robot interaction frequently proclaims the inevitable coming of the social robot era, with claims that social robots are increasingly being deployed in the real world. However, in practice, social robots remain scarce in everyday environments. In addition, HRI research rarely explores robots through an organisational lens. This results in a lack of evidence-based understanding of the organisational conditions that are key to the presence--or absence--of social robots in the real world, which are often more decisive than technical sophistication. In this paper, we motivate why organisational context is crucial to the investigation of real-world social robots and provide examples of how this shapes robot acceptance. We detail the methodology of our ongoing empirical research with client organisations and robot developers. Through this critical organisational lens, we learn where social robots are, what they are doing, how they are designed, and why organisations are deploying them.