Co-designing Robot Dogs with and for Neurodivergent Individuals: Opportunities and Challenges

Social robots have been demonstrated to support neurodivergent individuals in health and educational settings, but the roles and benefits of social robots in the everyday lives of neurodivergent people are underexplored. We investigated daily-life use cases of robot dogs for neurodivergent individuals through three co-design workshops over five weeks. The workshops included interactions between neurodivergent participants and robot dogs, followed by feedback sessions. Participants showed high acceptance levels towards robot dogs and envisioned use cases that fulfilled practical, emotional, and social needs. Some participants associated robotic failures with rejection, leading us to further explore the impacts and communication of failures. Results showed how robot dogs can provide opportunities for users to be in a caregiving role and engage in interpersonal interactions. We conclude by discussing how to leverage the potential benefits of social robots by designing for social opportunities and ways to design failures to mitigate potential harms for users.