Coffee, Tea, Robots? The Performative Staging of Service Robots in 'Robot Cafes' in Japan

We present an ethnographic observational study of six robot cafes in Japan to understand how service robots are performatively staged and presented to the public. We particularly attend to the diverse ways in which the physical setting and ambience of the cafes, the verbal characterization of and staff behaviors toward robots, explicit and implicit instructions on appropriate interactions with robots, and handling of robot malfunctions constitute robots as socially acceptable and useful in daily life. Such scaffolding enables robots to provide material and affective services to cafe visitors, and visitors to explore various interaction possibilities with robots. Our work contributes to the critical study of the ongoing construction of "robot cultures" in Japan, and calls attention to public interactions with robots and the importance of contextual staging beyond individual robot features in human-robot interaction design.