Domestic robots are already commonplace in many homes, while humanoid companion robots like Pepper are increasingly becoming part of different kinds of care work. Drawing on fieldwork at a robotics lab, as well as our personal encounters with domestic robots, we use here the metaphor of “hard-to-reach corners” to explore the socio-technical limitations of companion robots and our differing abilities to respond to these limitations. This paper presents “hard-to-reach-corners” as a problematic for design interaction, offering them as an opportunity for thinking about context and intersectional aspects of adaptation.
Funding agencies: Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program –Humanities and Society (WASP-HS) funded by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.