7. Conclusion and outlook
This article presented the Robot Inclusive Spaces challenge as a design initiative that uses competition framework to complement the current focus on “designing robots” approach with a “design for robots” strategy to overall traditional research problems in real world robot deployments. The RIS challenge is the first of its kind bringing together architects, roboticists and designers in developing design principles, methods and best practices for robot inclusive spaces. With the service robotics industry witnessing a rapid growth, a competition platform that offers “design for robots” solutions would significantly impact the integration of these robots into social spaces. The first design challenge is intended to be a starting point of a much larger multi-national competition that cuts across sociopolitical, cultural and geographical boundaries. The challenge is expected to experience numerous iterations both on technical and organizational aspects considering development from individual runs, participants, scenarios and tasks. Moreover, as one of the main issues to be addressed in the short term is the implementation of a holistic benchmarking framework that considers both overall system performance as well adherence to design principles. Gradually, we expect the test scenarios to move from mock setting to real world social spaces like corporate office spaces, home and shopping malls. We also hope to see open source standards be developed for users, outlining how they can design their homes in order to benefit the most from service robots. This step would allow the users directly to take control, transform into designers and optimize their experience robots in their lives.
