Don't you wonder sometimes, just like I do, about how would it really be and feel like when robots would be in a social space or a household? Will it be a different experience from when interacting with robots in exhibitions, academic or business premises? I believe that the experience will involve various novel confused feelings. However, all guessing won't offer a solid basis for any kind of knowledge. So let's see how visiting a robot house would reveal some of the truth about it, which is the right place to answer these kinds of questions.

It sounds as if it is a place where you go and visit a robot's family. However that is still an ambitious interpretation to think of. In fact, Robot House is an ordinary British style flat that was used by LIREC research team to run Human Robot Interaction (HRI) experiments to test how participants would feel and react towards robots in certain situations [1]. In this house the host is a robot from the PeopleBots with a tray that fetches snacks to you whenever you like.

To know what is people's perspective about robots in terms of having social relationships with them, certain methods and experiments have to be performed to collect data. For this reason the Robot House was started. The house idea came from the fact that apparently, the physical space plays a role in a way that it psychologically affects the comfort of the subjects. Because when trials took place in the premises of a university or a lab, the participants felt that they are being watched or judged for their thoughts, ideas and reactions. A neutral space would avoid having these types of confusions. It would allow subjects to feel more relaxed and not obsessed with the idea that they are being watched. Leading to more accurate results instead of ambiguous results from subjects reacting in a way they should follow.

In this two rooms house, the HRI experiments took place in two experimentation styles: Live HRI and Video HRI to investigate more in the participants' point of views for interacting with robots and how domestic robots can be useful and efficient in order to well integrate them into society.