Distributed agency in HRI-an exploratory study of a narrative robot design.

We explore an alternative approach to the design of robots that deviates from the common envisionment of having one unified agent. What if robots are depicted as an agentic ensemble where agency is distributed over different components? In the project presented here, we investigate the potential contributions of this approach to creating entertaining and joyful human-robot interaction (HRI), which also remains comprehensible to human observers. We built a service robot-which takes care of plants as a Plant-Watering Robot (PWR)-that appears as a small ship controlled by a robotic captain accompanied by kinetic elements.