Staging, Accommodating or Caring: Reviewing the Human Labor Involved in Shaping Robots into Agents

Abstract

This review explores the hidden labor humans perform to enable robots to function as agents in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). While robot agency is often viewed as internal and autonomous, this overlooks the relational dynamics that sustain robot functionality in real-world contexts. Drawing on feminist theory, the review emphasizes how humans share responsibility for managing robot limitations through scaffolding, mediation, and care work, which often goes unnoticed or under-valued. It compares studies investigating this labor, focusing on human roles and contributions to robot success, and identifies gaps, including limited research on domestic settings and a lack of frameworks to conceptualize this invisible work. The findings highlight the need to recognize human labor as integral to robot agency and propose future research using both qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand and value this essential work.