Artists as HRI pioneers : A creative approach to developing novel interactions for living with robots

In this article we present a long-term, continuous human-robot cohabitation experiment, which involved two professional artists, whose artistic work explores the boundary between science and society. The artists lived in the University of Hertfordshire Robot House full-time with various robots with different characteristics in a smart home environment. The artists immersed themselves in the robot populated living environment in order to explore and develop novel ways to interact with robots. The main research aim was to explore in a qualitative way the impact of a continuous weeklong exposure to robot companions and sensor environments on humans. This work has developed an Integrative Holistic Feedback Approach (IHFA) involving knowledgeable users in the design process of appearances, functionality and interactive behaviour of robots.