Robot inclusive space challenge: a design initiative

The Robot Inclusive Space challenge is a cross disciplinary design initiative set to foster collaboration between roboticists, engineers, designers, and architects towards realizing robot friendly social environments. In this paper, we present the motivations behind the targeted initiative and analyze the design principles associated with real world deployment of robots in social spaces. This paper identifies the critical need to further strengthen the design principles and underlying guidelines through the challenge with the latter expected to have a significant impact in a variety of application scenarios.