In-the-Wild Failures in a Long-Term HRI Deployment

Failures are typical in robotics deployments ``in-the-wild'', especially when robots perform their functions within social human spaces. This paper reports on the failures of an autonomous social robot called Lindsey, which has been used in a public museum for several years, covering over 1300 kilometres through its deployment. We present an analysis of distinctive failures observed during the deployment and focusing on those cases where the robot can leverage human help to resolve the problem situation. A final discussion outlines future research directions needed to ensure robots are equipped with adequate resources to detect and appropriately deal with failures requiring a human-in-the-loop approach.