Toward Designing User-centered Idle Behaviors for Social Robots in the Home

​Idle behaviors give interactive agents a sense of ​aliveness both in and outside of interactions. However, in our recent long-term study with Jibo, participants reported the robot's proactive behavior and constant motion as being disruptive and invasive to their living spaces. These findings are consistent with concerns expressed by participants in other studies conducted with a variety of agents. We propose design guidelines for social robots' idle behavior in order to promote a sense of control, privacy, and comfort for their owners. We encourage HRI researchers to include stakeholders in the design process not only for a robot's main functionalities but also for its idle behavior in order to ensure that robots successfully co-living with humans. We plan to further investigate the effects of different robot idle behaviors on long-term usability and engagement in home settings for our future work.