How robot dogs are sniff’able and bark’able: a video-analytical study of multispecies interactions

We explore a semi-experimental out-of-the-lab situation where researchers and visually impaired persons together with a guide dog and a robot dog assemble and interact. We use this case to discuss how certain kind of technologies, in this case a robot dog, mediate, and transform encounters between humans and other-than-humans, in this case a guide dog. This paper is based on a video ethnographic study in Denmark focusing on how a four-legged mobile robot (Spot, manufactured by Boston Dynamics) and a guide dog are socially configured in situ as ratified participants among visually impaired persons and researcher participants. Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) we provide detailed analysis of video excerpts and transcripts showing how the robot is verbally and bodily included in the interactional space but then afterwards treated as unwelcome and removed. We focus on participants’ interactional constructions of the robot’s and the dog’s participation status (Goffman, 1964). We use instances of how the dog treats the robot dog as a sniff’able and bark’able agent in situ - and accounted for as such by human participants - to further discuss the situated nature of agency and attribution of agency in multispecies settings. This work contributes to multispecies studies and STS/ANT by reference to Haraways (2023) work and to EMCA line of work focusing on interspecies (Due, 2023) and robotic agency (Pelikan et al., 2022).

References
Due, B. L. (2023). Interspecies intercorporeality and mediated haptic sociality: Distributing perception with a guide dog. Visual Studies, 38(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2021.1951620
Goffman, E. (1964). The Neglected Situation. American Anthropologist, 66(6), 133–136.
Haraway, D. (2023). When Species Meet. I The Routledge International Handbook of More-than-Human Studies. Routledge.
Pelikan, H., Broth, M., & Keevallik, L. (2022). When a Robot Comes to Life: The Interactional Achievement of Agency as a Transient Phenomenon. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 5(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.7146/si.v5i3.129915