New Study finds invisible ‘human work’ allows robots to deliver

“As the use of delivery robots increases it’s important to understand how people interact with them and acknowledge the role people on the street have in making the operation of robotic systems in public possible. When designing routes and programming robots, designers tend to put the robot at the heart of the space, but what we showed is that for a robot to successfully navigate a route it relies on the accomodation of people for it to be successful and not become an obstacle itself.” Dr Stuart Reeves, Co-Investigator at Horizon Digital Economy Research and Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham is PI on the Robots Mediating Interaction project.

This University of Nottingham Press Release is about a new study that shows people modify their behaviour to accommodate autonomous delivery robots, and it is this invisible ‘human work’ that enables robots to run smoothly on the streets.