Please Follow Me to the Next Stop: A Case Study of Planning, Deploying and Researching a Robot-Guided Tour in a Museum in the UK
Robots are increasingly being used in public spaces in the UK. Museums and galleries are a noteworthy setting for exploring robot adoption, such as for providing guided tours or enabling remote visits. Although robots have been deployed in museums in the past, there is arguably little information about what is involved in the process of both deploying and researching them. In this case study paper, we present our experiences and lessons learnt from conducting a research study of a robot-guided tour in a museum in the UK. We describe the process and stakeholders, and discuss the challenges and opportunities that emerged throughout. We provide recommendations for Human-Robot Interaction researchers hoping to move their investigations out of the lab and into the real world.
Authors
- Horia A. Maior (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0358-1555)
- Gisela Reyes-Cruz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5363-5489)
- Andriana Boudouraki (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8291-0459)
- Stuart Reeves (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7145-3320)
- Anna-Maria Piskopani (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4460-0433)
- Harriet Cameron (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6774-4547)
- Dominic Price (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6636-9482)
- Praminda Caleb-Solly (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8821-0464)
- Pepita Barnard (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4518-1207)
- Maria Jose Galvez Trigo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6492-0955)
- Joel E. Fischer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8878-2454)
Institutions
- University of Nottingham (GB)
- Cardiff University (GB)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-04-23
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3706660
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 4.88
Funders
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council