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arXiv · 2602.15767

Robot-Assisted Social Dining as a White Glove Service

Atharva S Kashyap·Ugne Aleksandra Morkute·Patricia Alves-Oliveira
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Abstract

Robot-assisted feeding enables people with disabilities who require assistance eating to enjoy a meal independently and with dignity. However, existing systems have only been tested in-lab or in-home, leaving in-the-wild social dining contexts (e.g., restaurants) largely unexplored. Designing a robot for such contexts presents unique challenges, such as dynamic and unsupervised dining environments that a robot needs to account for and respond to. Through speculative participatory design with people with disabilities, supported by semi-structured interviews and a custom AI-based visual storyboarding tool, we uncovered ideal scenarios for in-the-wild social dining. Our key insight suggests that such systems should: embody the principles of a white glove service where the robot (1) supports multimodal inputs and unobtrusive outputs; (2) has contextually sensitive social behavior and prioritizes the user; (3) has expanded roles beyond feeding; (4) adapts to other relationships at the dining table. Our work has implications for in-the-wild and group contexts of robot-assisted feeding.

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Atharva S Kashyap, Ugne Aleksandra Morkute, Patricia Alves-Oliveira. 2026-02-17. Robot-Assisted Social Dining as a White Glove Service. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790481

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