\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 study how people respond to robot behavior today. That requires interactions that feel real even when autonomy is incomplete. 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.

Social robotics focuses on robots designed for social interaction with humans, and it poses unique challenges for autonomy. 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 limitation, researchers use 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 a WoZ setup: a human operator (the ``wizard'') sits in a separate room, observing the interaction through cameras and microphones. When the subject appears frustrated, the wizard makes the robot say an encouraging phrase and perform a supportive gesture. To the subject, the robot appears to be acting autonomously, responding naturally to the subject's 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.

Despite its versatility, WoZ research faces two critical challenges. The first is the accessibility problem: a high technical barrier prevents many non-programmers, such as experts in psychology or sociology, from conducting their own studies without engineering support. The second is the reproducibility problem: the hardware landscape is highly fragmented, and researchers frequently build custom control interfaces for specific robots and experiments. These tools are rarely shared, making it difficult for the scientific community to replicate results or compare findings across labs.

\section{Proposed Approach}

To address the accessibility and reproducibility problems in WoZ-based HRI research, I 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, meaning the same experiment design can be reused across different robot hardware as technology evolves.

This approach represents a shift from the current paradigm of custom, 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 of a study, such a framework can systematically address both technical barriers and sources of variability 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. HRIStudio is an open-source proof-of-concept implementation that validates the proposed framework and serves as the reference system evaluated in this thesis.

\section{Research Objectives}

This thesis builds upon foundational work presented in two prior peer-reviewed publications. Prof. Perrone and I 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 a first 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 disciplinary accessibility and scientific reproducibility of Human-Robot Interaction research compared to existing platform-specific tools?

To answer this question, this thesis validates the framework through a user study, in which I implement the architectural concepts from the prior work in a complete, functional software platform and evaluate it with real users. The study compares setup effort, protocol adherence, and usability between HRIStudio and a representative baseline. 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.

\section{Chapter Summary}

This chapter has established the context and objectives for this thesis. I identified two critical challenges facing WoZ-based HRI research: the accessibility problem, where high technical barriers limit participation by non-programmers, and the reproducibility problem, where fragmented tooling makes results difficult to replicate across labs. 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 a user study. To validate this approach, the next chapters establish the technical and methodological foundations.