Acceptability, Acceptance and Adoption of Telepresence Robots in Museums: The Museum Professionals' Perspectives

Cameron, Harriet R; Reyes-Cruz, Gisela; Piskopani, Anna-Maria; Barnard, Pepita; Boudouraki, Andriana; Caleb-Solly, Praminda; Castle-Green, Simon; Fischer, Joel; Hyde, Richard; Kucukyilmaz, Ayse; Maior, Horia A

Abstract

Telepresence robots have the potential to change our experiences in galleries and museums, allowing for a range of hybrid interactions for visitors and museum professionals, improving accessibility, offering activities or information, and providing a range of practical use cases (e.g. the robots augmenting museum exhibits). We present the results of 3 qualitative studies conducted in the UK exploring the acceptability (1-interviews with museum professionals with no previous exposure to telepresence), acceptance (2-focus groups for initial exposure to telepresence robots), and adoption (3-interviews with museum professionals with long-term exposure to robots) of telepresence robots in museums. Our results identified opportunities and barriers focusing on the unique perspective of museum professionals and showed how priorities of museums shift and change according to their exposure to different technologies. We proposed a set of practical guidelines for future telepresence robots in museums, including design implications, potential applications , and integration strategies.

Citation

Cameron, H. R., Reyes-Cruz, G., Piskopani, A.-M., Barnard, P., Boudouraki, A., Caleb-Solly, P., Castle-Green, S., Fischer, J., Hyde, R., Kucukyilmaz, A., & Maior, H. A. (2025, April). Acceptability, Acceptance and Adoption of Telepresence Robots in Museums: The Museum Professionals' Perspectives. Presented at CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama, Japan

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• Start Date: Apr 26, 2025
• End Date: May 1, 2025
• Acceptance Date: Jan 16, 2025
• Deposit Date: Feb 12, 2025
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713533
• Keywords: CCS CONCEPTS • General and reference → Design; • Human-centered com- puting; • Social and professional topics → User characteristics; • Applied computing → Arts and humanities; KEYWORDS telepresence robotics, museums and galleries, technology accep- tance lifecycle
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/45309791
• Related Public URLs: https://chi2025.acm.org/