Adventures of an Adolescent Trash Barrel

Abstract

Our demonstration presents the roving trash barrel, a robot that we developed to understand how people perceive and respond to a mobile trashcan that offers its service in public settings. In a field study, we found that considerable coordination is involved in actively collecting trash, including capturing someone's attention, signaling an intention to interact, acknowledging the willingness--or implicit signs of unwillingness--to interact, and closing the interaction. In post-interaction interviews, we discovered that people believed that the robot was intrinsically motivated to collect trash, and attributed social mishaps to higher levels of autonomy.