Situating Robots in the Organizational Dynamics of the Gas Energy Industry: A Collaborative Design Study

Human-robot collaboration has been an important topic in the HRI communities. In this paper, we explore how robots can contribute to gas pipeline inspection work, and how they can support one of the most important elements of energy transportation infrastructure. To situate robots in the gas energy industry, we conducted a collaborative design study, where our co-designers were diverse stakeholders: from pipeline researchers to utility workers. The contribution of this paper is threefold: First, we explore gas pipeline work settings as a new context where robots can provide significant benefit, considering that public infrastructure is vast but understudied. Second, we collaboratively envisioned the design and use cases together with workers who are not often invited to human-robot collaboration research. Lastly, we address the importance of viewing humans in human-robot collaboration as 'workers' whose roles and expertise are shaped within organizational dynamics. This study aims to shed light on the importance of a more nuanced understanding of work contexts and the positionality of robots within organizations.