Studying Socially Assistive Robots in Their Organizational Context: Studies with PARO in a Nursing Home

We explore human-robot interaction (HRI) with socially assistive robots within a broader social context instead of one-on-one interaction.. In this paper, we describe two in situ studies of the socially assistive robot PARO in a local nursing home -- one in a controlled small group setting, and one in free-form interaction in a public space -- as well as our future research agenda to facilitate socially situated exploration of assistive robotics in the wild. We particularly focus on how people and institutions scaffold successful HRI, and identify how social mediation, individual sensemaking, and other social factors affect the success of HRI.