Abstract

It is recognized that robots play an increasingly active role in humans’ daily life. Humans interact with robots at work, at home, in public settings among others. Context matters – understanding human-robot interaction in context is key to achieve what in socio-technical theory is strived for as ‘joint optimization’ referring to the design of a social and technical system that works smoothly together and bring quality to both technological performance and people’s lives. In this presentation we present how we currently research human-robot interaction in two contexts  i) in a home setting focused on design and use of an exoskeleton for people living with severe paralysis and ii) in an industrial work setting focused on design and use of co-bots in manufacturing. We present and discuss how the context of human-robot interaction can be investigated through and contribute to the development of the conceptual understanding of artefact ecologies. And we present examples of how we conduct empirical research in human-robot interaction through this analytic lens and by use of collaborative design methods. Finally, we discuss how contextual understandings contribute to the future design and use of robots.