Towards Considerate Human-Robot Coexistence: A Dual-Space Framework of Robot Design and Human Perception in Healthcare

2026-04-05

AI Summary

This study addresses the limitation of existing research, which predominantly focuses on static human attitudes toward healthcare robots while neglecting their dynamic evolution and the active role humans play in coexistence. Through a 14-week field-based co-design process and in-depth interviews, this work proposes the concept of “attentive human-robot coexistence,” positioning humans as design contributors, interpreters, and mediators, and emphasizing the social, temporal, and open-ended nature of coexistence. Qualitative analysis identifies four dimensions of human perceptual space: granularity of decomposition, temporal orientation, scope of reasoning, and sources of evidence. Building on these, the study develops a dual-space co-evolution framework linking human perceptual space and robot design space, revealing their temporal interaction mechanisms and offering a novel design paradigm that integrates cognitive evolution with socio-contextual dynamics in human-robot coexistence.

Abstract

The rapid advancement of robotics, spanning expanded capabilities, more intuitive interaction, and more integration into real-world workflows, is reshaping what it means for humans and robots to coexist. Beyond sharing physical space, this coexistence is increasingly characterized by organizational embeddedness, temporal evolution, social situatedness, and open-ended uncertainty. However, prior work has largely focused on static snapshots of attitudes and acceptance, offering limited insight into how perceptions form and evolve, and what active role humans play in shaping coexistence as a dynamic process. We address these gaps through in-depth follow-up interviews with nine participants from a 14-week co-design study on healthcare robots. We identify the human perception space, including four interpretive dimensions (i.e., degree of decomposition, temporal orientation, scope of reasoning, and source of evidence). We enrich the conceptual framework of human-robot coexistence by conceptualizing the mutual relationship between the human perception space and the robot design space as a co-evolving loop, in which human needs, design decisions, situated interpretations, and social mediation continuously reshape one another over time. Building on this, we propose considerate human-robot coexistence, arguing that humans act not only as design contributors but also as interpreters and mediators who actively shape how robots are understood and integrated across deployment stages.

Problem

• human-robot coexistence
• human perception
• healthcare robotics
• dynamic process
• social situatedness

Innovation

• dual-space framework
• human perception
• co-evolving loop
• considerate coexistence
• healthcare robotics