Trashbots

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Having successfully deployed a pair of trash barrel robots (a.k.a. “trashbots”) in Manhattan’s Astor Place last year — much to the amusement and occasional consternation of New Yorkers — Wendy Ju, Associate Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, and her team (led by Ph.D. students Fanjun (Frank) Bu and Ilan Mandel and supported in the field by Melina Tsai, Nicole Shin, and JiaYing Li) have expanded their project to Downtown Brooklyn in order to study how people interact with everyday robotic objects in public spaces. As one might expect, one of their research questions explores whether the ‘bots will be treated differently in Brooklyn versus Manhattan.

“What are people’s behaviors and attitudes when trashbots first approach them in public?” Ju asks. “How do people’s reactions change depending on their behavior and their immediate social environment — such as the number of other people they’re with? Do people from different demographic groups and locations treat the robot differently? If so, what are the differences and what are the causes?”

Previously, the team found that New Yorkers perform a complex act of sensemaking when it comes to robots, implicitly making assumptions about their owners, purpose, location, actions, and so on to assess why they are present and how to react. In most cases, passersby assumed the pair of robots were a team behaving as either waiters or pets.

“We found that people had thoughts not only of the robots or the interactions the robots engaged in, but also the role or the idea of the robots, and how other people would respond if they saw the robot, or what the implications on society were,” says Ju. “They wanted to understand details about the deployment — are the robots a commercial product? An art project? Public infrastructure? Because having that knowledge would change the way they would interact with the robot.”

The next phase of research will focus on expanding this project to all five boroughs in New York City.