Robots in Groups

Workshop Overview

Over the last decade the idea that robots could become an integral part of groups and teams has developed from a promising vision into a reality. Robots are increasingly part of groups and teams, yet most human-robot interaction research still focuses on a single human interacting with a single robot. The goal for the workshop is therefore to advance research in computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and human robot interaction (HRI) by raising awareness for the social and technical challenges that surround the placement of robots within work-groups and teams. The workshop will be organized around three central questions: (1) How do robots shape the dynamics of groups and teams in existing settings? (2) How does a robot’s behavior shape how humans interact with each other in dyads and in larger groups and teams? (3) How can robots improve the performance of work groups and teams by acting on social processes? Through presentations centered around these core questions we expect in depth discussions around each question and, ultimately, to improve the quality of and support the growth of research in the CSCW community that focuses on the intersection of robots and groups and teams.

Goal of the Workshop

The goal is to advance research in computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and human robot interaction (HRI) by raising awareness for the social and technical challenges that surround the placement of robots within work-groups and teams.

By bringing together researchers from the human robot interaction community (HRI) with members of the CSCW research community, we aim to facilitate discussion that will generate awareness of existing research at the intersection of robots and groups/teams and that will highlight open questions that current research has not sufficiently addressed.

Introduction to Open Questions (Themes)

Over the last decade the idea that robots and agents could become an integral part of groups and teams has developed from a promising vision (Hinds, Roberts, & Jones, 2004) into a reality.

For example, the shift in mobile tele-presence robots from an expensive niche technology towards an affordable and widely available technology has enabled increased use of these robots in small teamwork settings in industry (e.g. Takayama & Go, 2012) and in larger group settings at conferences (e.g. Neustaedter et al., 2016).

More complex tele-operated robots also increasingly support high stakes teamwork across a wide range of settings such as search and rescue missions (e.g. Murphy, 2004), space exploration missions (e.g. Diftler et al., 2011), and minimally invasive surgeries (e.g. Duysburgh, Elprama, & Jacobs, 2014).

Even fully autonomous systems are frequently employed as part of groups and teams for example by performing delivery tasks in hospitals (e.g. Ljungblad, 2012) or by working closely alongside people on manufacturing floors (e.g. Sauppe & Mutlu, 2015). Recent advances in AI and particularly in conversational agents likely lead to an even more increased placement robotic systems in groups across domestic (e.g. Amazon Echo, Google Home, Jibo) and work settings.

This increase of situations in which robots participate in groups and teams stands in stark contrast with the bulk of human-robot interaction research that – to date – has focused only on a single human interacting with a single robot. Studies that explore the intersection of robots and groups and teams are rare in CSCW research.

The expansion in the number of users who are interacting on a daily basis with robotic systems in groups or teams should be reflected in an increasing number of research efforts addressing robots in groups and teams issues. Given the vast experience within the CSCW community to study how technology more broadly affects the life and work of groups and teams, we see an opportunity to bring together researchers from the HRI and CSCW communities to address open challenges and questions.

The workshop content will be driven by the interests and experience of participants, but we detail below three questions we envision discussing that previous research has not sufficiently addressed.

How do robots shape the dynamics of groups and teams in existing settings?
Robots are already participating in work performed by groups and teams. For example, between 2007 and 2011 the number of procedures with the daVinci surgical robot increased by 400% in the U.S. alone, with a total of over 300,000 procedures per year in 2011 (Cooper et al., 2013). Despite this tremendous increase in the use of robots in team settings, we have little understanding how robots shape the dynamics of the groups and teams they are employed in. For example, it is not clear how robots affect core group processes such as conflict or power dynamics, and how the impact of a robot on these processes shapes short and long-term group outcomes.

How does a robot’s behavior shape how humans interact with each other in dyads and in larger groups and teams?
The bulk of existing research on human robot interaction focuses on one-on-one interactions between a human and a robot. Studies that explore settings in which one human interacts with multiple robots (e.g. Jung et al., 2013) or settings in which one robot interacts with multiple humans (e.g. Jung et al., 2015; Short & Mataric, 2016) are rare. Past research has contributed fundamental understanding about the psychology of human robot interaction and how robots can be designed that interact and collaborate well with people (Shah et al., 2011). However, little is known about how robots impact the ways in which people interact with each other and even less is known about how robots impact or should impact the way people interact with each other in more complex group settings.

How can robots improve the performance of work groups and teams by acting on social processes?
Current technical approaches for robots to support teamwork rely mostly on approaches to support taskwork processes (Marks et al., 2001), that is, those processes that directly move the task forward (e.g. Shah et al., 2011). Given that the social and emotional functioning of groups and teams has been shown to be crucial for group performance (Barsade & Gibson, 2007), we see an opportunity for robots to improve group performance by acting on teamwork processes that ensure the social functioning of teams.

As robots increasingly participate in groups and teams, understanding their impact on the social and task oriented functioning of groups and teams through their mere presence or explicitly designed behavior becomes ever more important.

The need to address these questions and expand our understanding of human robot interaction from individuals to groups becomes even more urgent as new developments in AI have promoted a surge of new robots that enter into group settings.

Workshop Schedule

Posters will be taped to the wall of the workshop room to facilitate workshop discussions. The space allocated for each poster is flexible but the general CSCW poster guidelines recommend posters to stay within a maximum space of 48 inches by 48 inches (121 x 121 cm). Posters are recommended to be no longer or wider than 45 inches (114 cm) in either dimension; however, up to 47 inches (119 cm) is allowable. Smaller posters are acceptable.

   Workshop Speakers

Janet Vertesi
Janet Vertesi is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Princeton University. The majority of her research is on robotic spacecraft teams at NASA, and how the teams’ social organization affects and reflects their robots’ activities and scientific results. Janet’s first book, Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars is based on over two years of working with the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, and will be published by University of Chicago Press in early 2015. She is also working on an ethnography of the Cassini Mission to Saturn, thanks to a National Science Foundation Grant in Socio Computational Systems.

Pamela Hinds
Pamela J. Hinds is Professor and Director of the Center on Work, Technology, and Organization in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University. She studies the effect of technology on teams and collaboration. Pamela has conducted extensive research on the dynamics of geographically distributed work teams, particularly those spanning national boundaries. She explores issues of culture, language, identity, conflict, and the role of site visits in promoting knowledge sharing and collaboration. She has published extensively on the relationship between national culture and work practices, particularly exploring how work practices or technologies created in one location are understood and appropriated at distant sites. Pamela also has a body of research on human-robot interaction in the work environment and the dynamics of human-robot teams. Most recently, Pamela has begun to explore the changing nature of work in the advent of technology shifts such as increasing cyber-physical systems, intelligence and autonomy (e.g. autonomous robots, 3-D printing, open innovation, etc.). Her research has appeared in journals such as Organization Science, Research in Organizational Behavior, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Discoveries, Human-Computer Interaction, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Pamela is a Senior Editor of Organization Science. She is also co-editor with Sara Kiesler of the book Distributed Work (MIT Press). Pamela hold a Ph.D. in Organizational Science and Management from Carnegie Mellon University.

Accepted Papers

Participant Recruitment and Selection

We invite paper submissions that largely speak to the three key questions outlined above and/or fall into the topical areas listed below. Papers should be 2 to max 6 pages (including citations), and can be on research that the authors have already conducted. We also encourage position papers and submissions on research that the authors plan to conduct; feedback can be given during coffee breaks or discussions. Paper format should be formatted according to the Extended Abstracts Format and submitted by email to robots.in.groups2017@gmail.com.

Possible paper topics include:

• Theories and frameworks about robots and agents in groups and teams
• Field studies of robots in group and team settings
• Ethical implications of employing robots in groups and teams
• Behavioral science research that examines the impact of specific robot attributes and behaviors on groups and teams
• Behaviors for robots and agents to impact social dynamics in groups
• Technical systems that enable robots to participate in group and team settings
• Design approaches for developing robots that participate in groups and teams
• Techniques for robots to improve group performance

Papers will each receive a minimum of two reviews. Accepted papers will be made publically available on the workshop website.

Out of the accepted papers we will select two papers for each session to be presented. Papers that are selected will be presented in a 15 minutes lecture format and be discussed further during the round table discussion and during a coffee break. Other accepted papers will be presented as posters and discussed during the coffee breaks. Accepted papers will require that at least one presenting author to register for the workshop.

Organizing Team

Malte F. Jung
Malte Jung is an Assistant Professor in Information Science at Cornell University and the Nancy H. ’62 and Philip M. ’62 Young Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow. His research focuses on the intersections of groups and teams, robots, and emotion. The goal of his research is to inform our basic understanding of robots in work teams as well as to inform how we design robotic systems to support teamwork across a wide range of settings. Malte Jung received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and his Ph.D. minor in Psychology from Stanford University. Prior to joining Cornell, Malte Jung completed a postdoc at the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization at Stanford University. He holds a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Munich and an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Selma Sabanovic
Selma Sabanovic is an Associate Professor in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her work combines the social studies of computing, focusing particularly on the design, use, and consequences of socially interactive and assistive robots in different social and cultural contexts, with research on human-robot interaction (HRI) and social robot design. A common aim of her research is to go beyond studies of one-on-one interactions between people and robots by understanding the effect of group-level, institutional, and cultural factors on HRI. She is currently the PI on an NSF-funded project focusing specifically on group HRI. Selma has been a Visiting Professor at Bielefeld University (2014), a lecturer in Stanford University (2008-2009), and a visiting scholar at AIST, Tsukuba, Japan and at Carnegie Mellon University (2005). She has been an active participant in the HRI community, including being the Program Committee chair for HRI 2016 and serving on the program committees of HRI, RO-MAN, ARSO, and ICSR conferences. Selma received her PhD in Science and Technology Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2007.

Friederike Eyssel
Friederike Eyssel is Professor of Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research at Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology at Bielefeld University, Germany. Dr. Eyssel is interested in various research topics ranging from social robotics, social agents, and ambient intelligence to attitude change, prejudice reduction and sexual objectification of women. Crossing disciplines, Dr. Eyssel has published vastly in the field of social psychology, human-robot interaction and social robotics and serves as a reviewer for > 20 journals. Current third-party funded research projects (DFG, BMBF, FP7) address user experience and smart home technologies, and ethical aspects associated with assistive technology. She has been a visiting professor at NYU Abu Dhabi, University of Cologne, Technical University of Dortmund and University of Münster between 2010-2015. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from Bielefeld University in 2007.

Marlena Fraune
Marlena is a Ph.D. candidate of Cognitive Science and Psychology at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her dissertation work involves the application of intergroup dynamics from social psychology to groups in human-robot interaction. In particular, she examines how the cohesiveness (i.e., “entitativity”) of human groups or of robot groups affects how humans and robots interact together, as well as cultural differences in intergroup interaction with robots. Marlena Fraune spent the past three summers as a visiting researcher at Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT) in Japan (2014, 2016) and Bielefeld University in Germany (2015). In Winter 2016, she was a visiting researcher at the Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) Lab in Japan. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI), and Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) initiatives.

References

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2. Cooper, M. A., Ibrahim, A., Lyu, H., & Makary, M. A. (2013). Underreporting of robotic surgery complications. Journal for Healthcare Quality.
3. Diftler, M. A., Mehling, J. S., Abdallah, M. E., Radford, N. A., Bridgwater, L. B., Sanders, A. M., & Ambrose, R. O. (2011). Robonaut 2-the first humanoid robot in space. Proceedings of ICRA 2011, 2178-2183. IEEE Press.
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