Urban HCI investigates how digital technologies shape human behaviour within the social, spatial, temporal dynamics of public space. Meanwhile, robotic furniture research demonstrates how the purposeful animation of mundane utilitarian elements can influence human behaviour in everyday contexts. Taken together, these strands highlight an untapped opportunity to investigate how animated public furniture could mediate social interaction in urban environments. In this paper, we present the design process and in-the-wild study of mobile robotic benches that reconfigure with a semi-outdoor public space. Our findings show that the gestural performance of the benches manifested three affordances perceived by passersby, they activated engagement as robots, redistributed engagement as spatial elements, and settled engagement as infrastructure. We proposed an Affordance Transition Model (ATM) describing how robotic furniture could proactively facilitate transition between these affordances to engage passersby. Our study bridges robotic furniture and urban HCI to activate human experience with the built environment purposefully.

翻译：城市人机交互研究数字技术如何在公共空间的社会、空间与时间动态中塑造人类行为。与此同时，机器人家具研究展示了日常实用元素的有意动态化如何影响日常环境中的人类行为。综合来看，这些研究方向揭示了一个尚未开发的机遇——研究动画公共家具如何调节城市环境中的社交互动。本文阐述了可移动机器人长椅的设计过程及其在半室外公共空间中的实地研究。研究结果表明，长椅的姿态展演呈现出被路人感知的三种可供性：作为机器人激活参与、作为空间元素重新分配参与、以及作为基础设施稳定参与。我们提出了可供性过渡模型（Affordance Transition Model, ATM），描述机器人家具如何主动促进这些可供性之间的转换以吸引路人参与。本研究将机器人家具与城市人机交互相联结，旨在有目的地激活人类与建筑环境的交互体验。