Organizations: Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA · Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Design-oriented HRI is increasingly interested in robots as long-term companions, yet many designs still assume a fixed form and a stable set of functions. We present an ongoing design research program that treats modularity as a designerly medium - a way to make long-term human-robot relationships discussable and material through co-design. Across a series of lifespan-oriented co-design activities, participants repeatedly reconfigured the same robot for different life stages, using modular parts to express changing needs, values, and roles. From these outcomes, we articulate PAS (Personalization-Adaptability-Sustainability) as a human-centered lens on how people enact modularity in practice: configuring for self-expression, adapting across transitions, and sustaining robots through repair, reuse, and continuity. We then sketch next steps toward a fabrication-aware, community-extensible modular platform and propose evaluation criteria for designerly HRI work that prioritize expressive adequacy, lifespan plausibility, repairability-in-use, and responsible stewardship - not only usability or performance.
Figures & tables
Figure 1. A list of selectively 3D appearance modules, translated from a collection of digital sketches, illustrate how our proposed parts can be assembled into different robot configurations.