While the accumulation of practical knowledge provided researchers with much insight into successful human-robot interaction (HRI), a broader discussion about the role of theoretical knowledge is still lacking. It is unfortunate because it is also important to explicitly consider theory and theorizing in HRI as crucial contributions when aspiring to develop this field of research into a mature science. With our proposed interactive half-day workshop, we aim to provide a vibrant setting for the participants to discuss the “what, why, and how” of theoretical knowledge in HRI, as they share and learn from each other's experiences and competence. In the long-term perspective, the outcome of this workshop will lay the foundation for a supportive research community that encourages researchers to reflect and collaborate further on theory-grounded HRI work.

Potential applications of robots in private and public human spaces have prompted the design of so-called “social robots” that can interact with humans in social settings and potentially cause humans to attach to the robots. The focus of this article is an analysis of possible benefits and challenges arising from such human-robot attachment as reported in the HRI literature, followed by guidelines for the use and the design of robots that might elicit attachment bonds. We start by analyzing the potential benefits for humans becoming attached to robots, which might include increased natural interaction, effectiveness and acceptance of the robot, social companionship, and well-being for the human. Turning to the potential risks associated with human-robot attachment, we discuss the possibly suboptimal use of the robot in the most benign cases, but also the potential formation of unidirectional emotional bonds, and the potential for deception and subconscious influence of the robot on the person in more severe cases. The upshot of the analysis then is a recommendation to reconceptualize relationships with social robots in an attempt to retain potential benefits of human-robot attachment, while mitigating (to the extent possible) its downsides.

Trust in human-robot interactions (HRI) is measured in two main ways: through subjective questionnaires and through behavioral tasks. To optimize measurements of trust through questionnaires, the field of HRI faces two challenges: the development of standardized measures that apply to a variety of robots with different capabilities, and the exploration of social and relational dimensions of trust in robots (e.g., benevolence). In this paper we look at how different trust questionnaires (Lyons & Guznov, 2019; Schaefer, 2016; Ullman & Malle, 2018) fare given these challenges that pull in different directions (being general vs. being exploratory) by studying whether people think the items in these questionnaires are applicable to different kinds of robots and interactions. In Study 1 we show that after being presented with a robot (non-humanoid) and an interaction scenario (fire evacuation), participants rated multiple questionnaire items such as "This robot is principled" as "Non-applicable to robots in general" or "Non-applicable to this robot." In Study 2 we show that the frequency of these ratings change (indeed, even for items rated as N/A to robots in general) when a new scenario is presented (game playing with a humanoid robot). Finally, while overall trust scores remained robust to N/A ratings, our results revealed potential fallacies in the way these scores are commonly interpreted. We conclude with recommendations for the development, use and results-reporting of trust questionnaires for future studies, as well as theoretical implications for the field of HRI.