The Lab is Wild: Navigating Human-Robot Interaction as a Socio-Spatial Practice in the Design Environment
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Authors
Manalo, Bethany N.
Issue Date
2025
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
ethnography , human-robot interaction , rhetorical narratives , social robotics , socio-spatial theory , socio-technical systems
Alternative Title
Abstract
This thesis reframes the study of human-robot interaction (HRI) by turning ethnographic attention toward the design environment itself. While HRI research often centers on end-users and robots “in the wild,” this study focuses on the engineers as creators, arguing that the lab is not a neutral backdrop, but rather a dynamic, relational space where the social dimensions of robotics are actively shaped. Drawing on nearly four years of participant-observation within the Socially Assistive Robotics Group (SARG) at the University of Nevada, Reno, this research examines how interdisciplinary collaborators—faculty, staff, and students—navigate the social, spatial, and technical entanglements of building a socially interactive museum tour guide robot. Through attention to collaboration, friction, failure, and informal practices—such as coffee rituals, shared workspaces, and spatial improvisation—it reveals how the design process is influenced by more than technical objectives: it is shaped by institutional structures, embodied labor, and narratives about robotics’ futures. Guided by socio-spatial theory from human geography and critical robotics studies, the thesis conceptualizes HRI as a socio-spatial practice—emerging not only in public interactions, but through the iterative, affectively charged labor of robot design. Ethnography, participant-observation, and rhetorical analysis are used to examine how space, labor, and language co-construct the possibilities of social robotics. By reframing the human actor as designer rather than user, this study provides new insights into HRI, foregrounding the socio-technical processes that underpin robotic development. It argues that understanding robots as social agents requires understanding the social conditions of their making—and that the lab, with its disorder and improvisation, is itself a wild and generative space. The thesis highlights the design environment’s crucial role in shaping both robotic technologies and the narratives that frame their integration into human-centered settings.