Investigators: Chris Chesher and Justine Humphry
The proliferation of service robots in restaurants, accelerated during and after COVID-19 lockdowns, has significant implications for the construction of human/non-human interactions and the changing social and labour dynamics of restaurants and dining as well as for the roboticization of work in the service economy more broadly.
The aim of this research is to investigate the implementation of service robots in restaurants in Australian and Asian contexts focusing on their introduction and role in changing the nature of service work and consumption. This project is an empirical investigation utilising comparative and ethnographic methods to study the implementation and cultural appropriation of service robots in restaurants in Australia, Japan and Malaysia.
This research project draws from media and communication studies, cultural studies and science and technology studies, building on the understanding of robots as ‘emerging media’ with communicative capacities (Fortunati et al., 2020; Sugiyama, 2022). It will employ a combination of (1) site observations at restaurants and cafés; (2) interviews with robot company representatives, restaurant proprietors, managers, staff and customers; and (3) social media research of public postings of robots in restaurants. It will provide valuable evidence and insights for policymakers, robot designers, industry stakeholders, and researchers in Australia and internationally interested in the future of work and human-machine/robot communication and transformations in the service sector, and will form the basis of future research projects.