It is well established that when people seek medical care for physical conditions, their affective state significantly impacts health and recovery. Despite this, patients’ emotional needs are often overlooked due to the prioritization of physical care and resource constraints. Robots’ social capabilities, especially robotic attentiveness, present an opportunity to address this gap and enhance patients’ experience in healthcare settings. While robots are already integrated into healthcare, they are largely leveraged for functional support, with limited attention to their potential role in addressing affective challenges. In this field study, we evaluated whether a simple attentive robot could improve the affective experience in the emergency department (ED) of a public general hospital. Participants’ waiting experience was compared across three conditions: (1) waiting next to an attentive robot; (2) waiting next to a non-attentive robot; and (3) waiting without a robot. Behavioral and self-report measures indicated that the attentive robotic behavior reduced the unpleasantness of the waiting experience. Our findings highlight the power of leveraging simple robotic attentiveness to support patients' affective state in stressful healthcare environments.

Robots come in various forms and have different characteristics that may shape the interaction with them. In human-human interactions, height is a characteristic that shapes human dynamics, with taller people typically perceived as more persuasive. In this work, we aspired to evaluate if the same impact replicates in a human-robot interaction and specifically with a highly non-humanoid robotic object. The robot was designed with modules that could be easily added or removed, allowing us to change its height without altering other design features. To test the impact of the robot’s height, we evaluated participants’ compliance with its request to volunteer to perform a tedious task. In the experiment, participants performed a cognitive task on a computer, which was framed as the main experiment. When done, they were informed that the experiment was completed. While waiting to receive their credits, the robotic object, designed as a mobile robotic service table, entered the room, carrying a tablet that invited participants to complete a 300-question questionnaire voluntarily. We compared participants’ compliance in two conditions: A Short robot composed of two modules and 95cm in height and a Tall robot consisting of three modules and 132cm in height. Our findings revealed higher compliance with the Short robot’s request, demonstrating an opposite pattern to human dynamics. We conclude that while height has a substantial social impact on human-robot interactions, it follows a unique pattern of influence. Our findings suggest that designers cannot simply adopt and implement elements from human social dynamics to robots without testing them first.

Opening encounters are a fundamental component of every interaction. Psychology research highlights the valence of opening encounters as one of the main factors shaping the interaction that follows. We evaluated whether opening encounters would have a similarly powerful effect on human-robot interactions. Specifically, we tested how positive and negative opening encounters with a robot would impact the subsequent interaction. Participants interacted with a robot that performed gestures communicating different valences of opening encounters: Positive, Negative, or No opening encounter. To evaluate the impact on the subsequent interaction, we measured participants' willingness to comply with a help request presented by the robot and their perception of the robot. Our results indicated that most participants in the Positive opening encounter condition helped the robot and described a positive overall perception. An opposite pattern emerged in the other two conditions. Almost none of the participants helped the robot, and the perception of the robot was less positive. Our findings suggest that opening encounters with robots should be carefully considered due to their impact on the interaction that follows.

The biological prototyping revolution is in motion, and new tools are needed to empower HCI researchers, designers, makers, and bio-enthusiasts to experiment with live organisms. We present OpenLH, a liquid handling system that empowers users to conduct accurate and repetitive experiments with live biology in a sterile, open, and affordable way. OpenLH integrates a commercially available robotic arm with custom 3D printed parts, a modified pipette, and a visual block-based programming interface. The system is as accurate as commercial liquid handlers, capable of repetitive tasks in micro-scale accuracy, easy to operate, and supports multi-materials including biomaterials, microorganisms and cell cultures. We describe the system's technical implementation and two custom interfaces. We demonstrate the system's impact for the HCI community with two use cases that include experimentation with live biology in non-traditional fields: visual design using pigment-expressing E.coli, and beer brewing experiment using serial dilution in home context.