Minding the Stop-Gap: Attending to the “Temporary,” Unplanned, and Added Labor of Human-Robot Collaboration in Context

HRI scholars envision a future of work where human-robot collaboration brings mutual gains: organizations benefit from increased efficiency and productivity, and laborers benefit when tasks are redistributed between humans and robots based on their respective strengths. Yet, ironically, this collaboration in real-world contexts can lead to the opposite effect-workers' efficiency may decrease due to the additional tasks they must undertake to manage unexpected errors caused by robots. This “stop-gap” labor, often viewed as temporary and naturally manageable over time, can have significant and persistent impacts on workers. Drawing from observations across multiple robot deployment sites, this paper highlights the overlooked burden of this labor, challenging idealized visions of seamless human-robot collaboration. We argue that attending to stop-gap labor presents an opportunity for the HRI community to make genuine improvements for workers as primary stakeholders within complex socio-economic networks.