Emotional entanglements & emotional sustainability in HRI

Simão, Hugo, Hsu, Long-Jing, Cagiltay, Bengisu, Neto, Isabel, Wallbridge, Christopher ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9468-122X, Santos, Laura, Rocha, Filipa, Levinson, Leigh, Sequeira, João, Guerreiro, Tiago and Alves-Oliveira, Patricia 2026. Emotional entanglements & emotional sustainability in HRI. Presented at: HRI ’26, Edinburgh, Scotland, 16-19 March 2026. Proceedings of IEEE/ACM Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI '26). New York, NY, USA: ACM, 10.1145/3757279.3785587 Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research in real-world settings may lead to unanticipated, emotionally charged moments. While impacts of these moments on participants are reported in the literature, researchers’ emotions, which can affect participants’ experiences, are often left unreported. Learning from these moments is essential for advancing HRI quality and real-world deployment success. We introduce "Emotional Entanglements" as a lens in HRI to define a researcher’s capacity to anticipate, absorb, respond to, and recover from emotionally impactful events. Collecting testimonials using collaborative autoethnography from eleven researchers, we surface recurring emotional entanglements experienced in HRI studies, including tears with mixed meaning, participant attachment and loss upon robot withdrawal, and consequential participant decisions attributed to the robot, as well as how researchers navigated them amidst protocol constraints. This paper provides an actionable guide to "Emotional Sustainability in HRI",raising awareness of these often unreported situations and offering strategies for mitigation.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Computer Science & Informatics
Publisher:	ACM
ISBN:	978-1-4503-XXXX-X/2018
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 January 2026
Date of Acceptance:	5 June 2009
Last Modified:	14 Jan 2026 09:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/183831

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