ARISE is pleased to share a new conference publication by project partner CSIC, titled “When to Explain: Field Study Insights on Robot Failure Explanations for Older Adults”, published in the Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.

The paper is authored by Tamlin Love, Víctor Bermejo, Alberto Olivares-Alarcos, Antonio Andriella, Núria Vallès-Peris, Cristian Barrué and Guillem Alenyà. It contributes to the growing body of research on human–robot interaction, with a particular focus on how robots should communicate failures and explanations to users.

As robots are increasingly deployed in real-world environments, failures or unexpected behaviours may occur. In these situations, explanations can play a crucial role in helping users understand what happened, maintain trust and decide how to continue interacting with the system. However, not every failure requires the same type or timing of explanation. Understanding when to explain is therefore a key challenge for human-centred robotics.

This publication provides field study insights on robot failure explanations for older adults, offering valuable perspectives on how explanatory behaviour should be designed for users with specific needs, expectations and interaction contexts. The work is especially relevant for the development of robotic systems that aim to be safe, understandable and socially acceptable.

Within ARISE, these insights support the project’s broader ambition to develop autonomous robotic systems capable of operating in complex, human-centred environments. Whether in solar panel maintenance, installation tasks or agricultural scenarios, future robotic platforms must be able to interact with people in a way that is transparent, adaptive and trustworthy.

By investigating when robots should explain failures, this research strengthens the human-centred dimension of ARISE and contributes to the development of more reliable and user-aware robotic systems.

The publication is available through DOI: 10.1145/3776734.3794462.