Positioning Modular Co-Design in Future HRI Design Research

2026-02-22

AI Summary

This work addresses the limitation of existing human-robot interaction (HRI) designs, which typically assume fixed robotic forms and functions that fail to accommodate the dynamic evolution of users’ needs, values, and relational roles over long-term companionship. To overcome this, the study proposes the Personalization–Adaptability–Sustainability (PAS) framework, integrating modular hardware, participatory co-design, and lifecycle-oriented research methods to empower users to iteratively reconfigure a single robot in response to their changing identities and contexts. Findings demonstrate how modularity facilitates sustained self-expression, ongoing adaptation, and environmentally conscious usage. The project lays the groundwork for future manufacturable and community-scalable modular HRI platforms, advocating a designer-led paradigm centered on expressive adequacy, lifecycle coherence, reparability, and ethical accountability.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Adaptive Behavior

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Studies of user behavior, including longitudinal effects of personalized systems
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Personalized, context-aware and across-device search

Abstract

Design-oriented HRI is increasingly interested in robots as long-term companions, yet many designs still assume a fixed form and a stable set of functions. We present an ongoing design research program that treats modularity as a designerly medium - a way to make long-term human-robot relationships discussable and material through co-design. Across a series of lifespan-oriented co-design activities, participants repeatedly reconfigured the same robot for different life stages, using modular parts to express changing needs, values, and roles. From these outcomes, we articulate PAS (Personalization-Adaptability-Sustainability) as a human-centered lens on how people enact modularity in practice: configuring for self-expression, adapting across transitions, and sustaining robots through repair, reuse, and continuity. We then sketch next steps toward a fabrication-aware, community-extensible modular platform and propose evaluation criteria for designerly HRI work that prioritize expressive adequacy, lifespan plausibility, repairability-in-use, and responsible stewardship - not only usability or performance.

Problem

• modularity
• human-robot interaction
• long-term companionship
• personalization
• sustainability

Innovation

• modularity
• co-design
• human-robot interaction
• lifespan-oriented design
• PAS framework