Hello, my name is Andriana, and I'm
a PhD student at the University of Nottingham.
This paper was written with my supervisors
Joel Fischer, Stuart Reeves, and Sean Rintel.
Our paper looks at how assistance [INAUDIBLE]
robotic telepresence pilot is elicited
in pairs of local and remote interactions
doing a collaborative task.
We highlight how asymmetries of the medium
create a greater need for assistance.
But also influence how it is recruited.
As remote work is becoming the new norm,
and remote work technology such as mobile robotic telepresence
perhaps more mainstream.
It is important to examine what impact this
has on everyday experiences at work.
Assistance is a big part of collaborative work
and has an even bigger role in an asymmetrical situation where
each co-worker has different access to information,
as well as a different repertoire
of actions in their disposal to communicate.
On mobile robotic telepresence, for example, the remote user
has limited movement and perception capabilities
compared to their local colleagues.
And assets they might rely more on assistance from them.
We are specifically looking at assistance recruitment.
This refers to how the need for assistance
is conveyed between interactions.
We're drawing on work by Kendrick and Drew, who
examined a systems recruitment methods
if face-to-face interactions in their 2016 paper.
An example of assistance--
of an assistance recruitment method
would be an explicit request, such as saying,
can you give me your pen?
Or it could be more implicit like a report of trouble
such as, I've lost my pen, which lets the other decide
if and how to help.
Our data consisted of videos of pairs of participants
where one was the remote using the beam telepresence robot.
And the other was local, who are performing
a collaborative task.
Notably, the data-- in the data, we observed only instances
where the local was receiving help from the remote and not
the other way around.
Here is a fragment, and we are seeing
the point of view of the remote participant who
is searching for pink pieces of paper
that they need to photograph.
On the left hand side there's a pink bit of paper.
I don't know if you can see it.
Is-- it it the one I'm looking at right now?
- Yeah, it is.
- Yeah.
OK, got it.
Yeah.
So in this video, we see the remote participant spot
and approach a pink piece of paper,
and then the local [INAUDIBLE] approaches and informs him
about the paper.
And this video showcases the most common method
of a system's recruitment that we observed in our data.
And it is what Kendrick and Drew label projectable trouble.
And it is the most implicit form of recruitment
where without the remote user doing anything
the local anticipates that trouble might arise,
and they act in advance.
In this specific case, however, the assistance
was not really needed as the remote participant had already
seen the paper.
So the local here made an inaccurate judgment
in predicting the trouble.
This highlights an asymmetry of interest objectivity, which
was very prevalent in our data.
Essentially, both local and remote participants
were not always able to accurately assume
the perspective of their partner and predict what
they could see, hear, and do.
In this case, the local participant
did not have an accurate understanding
of how well his partner could see through the robot's camera.
And he even admits this by saying,
I don't know if you can see.
And while not always problematic,
this mismatch in perspective sometimes
hindered effective assistance recruitment.
In our paper, we present all the methods
of assistance recruitment that we observed in more detail.
And we also outlined the communicative asymmetries
that were prevalent.
Namely asymmetries in mobility, perception,
and inter-subjectivity.
And how those impacted the system's recruitment.
What we want to highlight with this paper
is that the additional features of a new medium,
such as the mobility and autonomy that
come with mobile robotic telepresence,
do not simply eliminate the communicative asymmetries that
exist in traditional video conferencing.
But rather they introduce the users
to a different fractured environment
that they still need to work around.
They asymmetries might also put one party at a disadvantage,
such as always being the one in need of assistance
and not having easy means of requesting it.
And so it is worth examining more deeply what
impact asymmetries like this might
have in people's everyday experience at work.
Thank you for watching, and I hope
you will look at our paper.
I'd be happy to email it on request to anyone interested.