UX-Centred Design and Field Evaluation of an Intelligent Waste-Sorting Robot for Cultural Tourism Events

Artificial intelligence (AI) and humanrobot interaction (HRI) are moving from controlled labs to complex public environments. Outdoor cultural tourism events (e.g., music festivals) face recurring pain points in waste management: rapid waste generation, slow manual response, and low visitor engagement with sustainability. This paper reports on the UX-centred design and field evaluation of an intelligent waste-sorting robot tailored for temporary outdoor cultural venues. The system integrates computer visionbased recognition, LiDAR navigation, robotic grasping, and realtime information visualisation with user research, co-design, and iterative prototyping. A mixedmethods study (surveys, interviews, observations) with organisers, regulators, and visitors informed the interaction model and service blueprint. In a festival pilot, the prototype doubled collection efficiency relative to manual practice, achieved over 90% recognition accuracy, and reduced unattended litter by 27%, while visitors reported higher sustainability awareness. Contributions include: (1) a UXcentred HRI framework for public cultural spaces; (2) a design pattern catalogue for legible, lowfriction interactions in crowds; and (3) empirical insights into transparency, trust, and acceptance relevant to deployment and policy in smarttourism contexts.