Based on several experiments bringing about encounters between human and robots, we try to understand how people engage with robots. We show how humans rely on the resources of everyday mltimodal interaction both to engage with robots, but also to make sense of what the latter do or can do. In particular, the way they recipient-design their action, manage openings and closings, or rely on additional resources to make sens of robots' behaviour (belly screens) publicly displays the humans' stance of human users with respect to robots' abilities. Experiments show how the robot's competence (or incompetence) is a dynamic interactional accomplishment which is also revisable and defeasible in the course of the encounter. The importance of the ability of the robot to provide relevant interactional moves, even occasionally, proves crucial in that respect, and therefore appears a relevant issue for future design.
SYMPOSIUM
The Urban Development and Mobility department (LISER) and the Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research (VUB) have organised a one-day symposium titled "To pay or not to pay – The role of fares in public transport" on the 20th of March 2025 at the Black Box (Maison des Sciences). The symposium marks the end of the LiFT project, a bilateral project funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) and the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). The LiFT project focused on the policy of abolishing fares in public transport, otherwise known as fare-free public transport (FFPT).