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\chapter{Introduction}
\label{ch:intro}
Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is an essential field of study for understanding how robots should communicate, collaborate, and coexist with people. As researchers work to develop social robots capable of natural interaction, they face a fundamental challenge: how to prototype and evaluate interaction designs before the underlying autonomous systems are fully developed. This chapter introduces the technical and methodological barriers that currently limit HRI research, describes a generalized approach to address these challenges, and establishes the research objectives and thesis statement for this work.
\section{Motivation}
To build the social robots of tomorrow, researchers must find ways to convincingly simulate them today. The process of designing and optimizing interactions between human and robot is essential to the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), a discipline dedicated to ensuring these technologies are safe, effective, and accepted by the public. However, current practices for prototyping these interactions are often hindered by complex technical requirements and inconsistent methodologies.
To build the social robots of tomorrow, researchers must find ways to convincingly simulate them today. The process of designing and optimizing interactions between human and robot is essential to HRI, a discipline dedicated to ensuring these technologies are safe, effective, and accepted by the public \cite{Bartneck2024}. However, current practices for prototyping these interactions are often hindered by complex technical requirements and inconsistent methodologies.
In a typical social robotics interaction, a robot operates autonomously based on pre-programmed behaviors. Because human interaction is inherently unpredictable, pre-programmed autonomy often fails to respond appropriately to subtle social cues, causing the interaction to degrade. To overcome this, researchers utilize the Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) technique, where a human operator--the ``wizard''--controls the robot's actions in real-time, creating the illusion of autonomy. This allows for rapid prototyping and testing of interaction designs before the underlying artificial intelligence is fully matured.
Social robotics, a subfield of HRI focused on robots designed for social interaction with humans, presents unique challenges. In a typical social robotics interaction, a robot operates autonomously based on pre-programmed behaviors. Because human interaction is inherently unpredictable, pre-programmed autonomy often fails to respond appropriately to subtle social cues, causing the interaction to degrade.
Despite its versaility, WoZ research faces two critical challenges. First, a high technical barrier prevents many non-programmers, such as experts in psychology or sociology, from conducting their own studies without engineering support. Second, the hardware landscape is highly fragmented. Researchers frequently build bespoke, ``one-off'' control interfaces for specific robots and specific experiments. These ad-hoc tools are rarely shared, making it difficult for the scientific community to replicate studies or verify findings. This has led to a replication crisis in HRI, where a lack of standardized tooling undermines the reliability of the field's body of knowledge.
To overcome this limitation, researchers employ the Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) technique. Consider a scenario where a researcher wants to test whether a robot tutor can effectively encourage student subjects during a learning task. Rather than building a complete autonomous system with speech recognition, natural language understanding, and emotion detection, the researcher uses WoZ: a human operator (the ``wizard'') sits in a separate room, observing the interaction through cameras and microphones. When the subject appears frustrated, the wizard triggers the robot to say an encouraging phrase and perform a supportive gesture. To the subject, the robot appears to be acting autonomously, responding naturally to their emotional state. This methodology allows researchers to rapidly prototype and test interaction designs, gathering valuable data about human responses before investing in the development of complex autonomous capabilities.
\section{HRIStudio Overview}
Despite its versatility, WoZ research faces two critical challenges. First, a high technical barrier prevents many non-programmers, such as experts in psychology or sociology, from conducting their own studies without engineering support. Second, the hardware landscape is highly fragmented. Researchers frequently build bespoke, ``one-off'' control interfaces for specific robots and specific experiments. These ad-hoc tools are rarely shared, making it difficult for the scientific community to replicate studies or verify findings. This has led to a replication crisis in HRI, where a lack of standardized tooling undermines the reliability of the field's body of knowledge.
To address these challenges, this thesis presents HRIStudio, a web-based platform designed to manage the entire lifecycle of a WoZ experiment: from interaction design, through live execution, to final analysis.
\section{Proposed Approach}
HRIStudio is built on three core design principles: disciplinary accessibility, scientific reproducibility, and platform sustainability. To achieve accessibility, the platform replaces complex code with a visual, drag-and-drop interface, allowing domain experts to design interaction flows much like creating a storyboard. To ensure reproducibility, HRIStudio enforces a structured experimental workflow that acts as a ``smart co-pilot'' for the wizard. It guides them through a standardized script to minimize human error while automatically logging synchronized data streams for analysis. Finally, unlike tools tightly coupled to specific hardware, HRIStudio utilizes a robot-agnostic architecture to ensure sustainability. This design ensures that the platform remains a viable tool for the community even as individual robot platforms become obsolete.
To address the challenges of accessibility and reproducibility in WoZ-based HRI research, we propose a web-based software framework that integrates three key capabilities. First, the framework must provide an intuitive interface for experiment design that does not require programming expertise, enabling domain experts from psychology, sociology, or other fields to create interaction protocols independently. Second, it must enforce methodological rigor during experiment execution by guiding the wizard through standardized procedures and preventing deviations from the experimental script that could compromise validity. Third, it must be platform-agnostic, splitting the experimental design from specific robot hardware to ensure the framework remains viable as technology evolves.
This approach represents a shift from the current paradigm of bespoke, robot-specific tools toward a unified platform that can serve as shared infrastructure for the HRI research community. By treating experiment design, execution, and analysis as distinct but integrated phases within a single system, such a framework can systematically address the sources of variability and technical barriers that currently limit research quality and reproducibility.
The implementation of this approach, realized as HRIStudio, demonstrates the feasibility of web-based control for real-time robot interaction studies. While HRIStudio is available as open-source software, it should be understood as a minimum viable product developed to validate the proposed framework. It is provided without ongoing technical support and serves primarily as a proof-of-concept for the architectural and methodological principles presented in this work.
\section{Research Objectives}
The primary objective of this work is to demonstrate that a unified, web-based software framework can significantly improve both the accessibility and reproducibility of HRI research. Specifically, this thesis aims to develop a production-ready platform, validate its accessibility for non-programmers, and assess its impact on experimental rigor.
This thesis builds upon foundational work presented in two prior peer-reviewed publications. We first introduced the conceptual framework for HRIStudio at the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) \cite{OConnor2024}, establishing the vision for a collaborative, web-based platform. Subsequently, we published the detailed system architecture and preliminary prototype at RO-MAN 2025 \cite{OConnor2025}, validating the technical feasibility of web-based robot control. These publications form the foundation upon which this thesis asks its central research question: can a unified, web-based software framework for Wizard-of-Oz experiments measurably improve both the disciplinary accessibility and scientific reproducibility of Human-Robot Interaction research compared to existing platform-specific tools?
First, this work translates the foundational architecture proposed in prior publications into a stable, full-featured software platform capable of supporting real-world experiments. Second, through a formal user study, we evaluate whether HRIStudio allows participants with no robotics experience to successfully design and execute a robot interaction, comparing their performance against industry-standard software. Finally, we quantify the impact of the platform's guided execution features on the consistency of wizard behavior and the accuracy of data collection.
To answer this question, this thesis validates the framework through implementation and empirical evaluation. I translate the architectural concepts from the prior work into a complete, functional software platform and subject it to rigorous testing with real users. The successful demonstration of this approach would provide evidence that thoughtful software infrastructure can lower barriers to entry in HRI while simultaneously improving the methodological rigor of the field.
This work builds upon preliminary concepts reported in two peer-reviewed publications \cite{OConnor2024, OConnor2025}. It extends that research by delivering the complete implementation of the system and a comprehensive empirical evaluation of its efficacy.
\section{Chapter Summary}
This chapter has established the context and objectives for this thesis. I identified two critical challenges facing WoZ-based HRI research: high technical barriers that limit accessibility to non-programmers, and fragmented tooling that undermines reproducibility. I proposed a web-based framework approach that addresses these challenges through intuitive design interfaces, enforced experimental protocols, and platform-agnostic architecture. Finally, I articulated a central research question and outlined how this thesis validates that approach through implementation and empirical evaluation. The following chapters develop the technical and empirical foundations needed to support this validation.