public comfort – A Cambridge pop-up let visitors drive Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot. Results show comfort rose most in homes, offices, and hospitals—suggesting hands-on control may beat passive media for public trust.
Boston Dynamics’ Spot is already familiar to many through videos—but a new kind of experience is testing whether seeing is believing.
In summer 2025. the RAI Institute staged a free pop-up robot lab at CambridgeSide mall in Cambridge. aiming squarely at what most robot coverage can’t: giving the public a chance to interact with a legged machine in real time.. The project centered on a “Drive-a-Spot” activity, where visitors used a controller to move Spot through a customized arena.. The goal wasn’t only to entertain.. It was to measure how public comfort with Spot changes when people move from spectator to operator.
A mall pop-up built like a stress test
The Robot Lab had two parts: a museum-style area showcasing both historical and modern legged robots. and a hands-on driving zone designed to feel just difficult enough to reveal how Spot handles the messy reality of indoor spaces.. The arena included tight passages. low obstacles. a barrier that required crouching clearance. and taller objects the robot needed to avoid—details that matter because the real world rarely looks like a clean demo.
Spot was supervised through joystick control, but it also showed autonomous adaptability while being driven.. Visitors weren’t required to “be roboticists” to participate.. Instead. they used a custom controller built on an adaptive video game format. with large buttons and basic actions like moving. adjusting height. sitting. standing. and tilting.. The participant range reflected that design choice: drivers ranged from very young children to people over 90.
Comfort rose most where people start skeptical
To understand how the experience shifted attitudes, guests could take a short survey before and after the driving session.. The questionnaire focused on two major dimensions: comfort—how relaxed or uneasy someone would feel encountering a robot in different settings—and suitability—how well that robot seemed to fit into those contexts.. Surveys covered multiple environments, including factory, home, hospital, office, and outdoor/disaster scenarios.
Roughly 10,000 guests visited the Robot Lab, with about 10% opting into the survey and the driving activity.. Survey results showed a consistent pattern: across all five contexts, comfort scores increased significantly after the interaction.. The change wasn’t presented as a dramatic leap; it was described as small to moderate. but meaningful because it held up across participants spanning different ages.
The biggest jump appeared in the outdoor/disaster context.. People often began with low comfort even when they believed Spot could be useful—suggesting perceived usefulness doesn’t automatically translate into emotional acceptance.. The organizers connected that gap to the way quadruped robots are sometimes portrayed in militarized imagery online.. A few minutes of hands-on control. in the safer framed environment of the arena. seemed to reduce some of that apprehension.
Some scenarios proved harder to move.. The factory-themed run showed no significant comfort gain, likely because baseline ratings there were already higher.. But in settings where skepticism was more common—home, office, and hospital—the gains stood out.. Many participants started the study neutral about Spot in a home, and then reported higher comfort afterward.. They also rated Spot as more suitable across environments beyond the exact one they drove through.
Hands-on control may reshape “where robots belong”
The most interesting takeaway may be less about one-time comfort and more about how people conceptualize robots’ role in daily life.. In the results, suitability increased most in the very places where people were least convinced at the start.. For example. visitors who drove Spot in a home-themed scenario didn’t just judge homes as more fitting; they also rated hospitals and offices as more suitable.
That suggests the intervention may do something broader than providing familiarity with a specific environment.. When people operate Spot themselves—even briefly—it can shift underlying assumptions about capability and limits.. In other words. the experience appears to help people map a robot’s behavior to real-world expectations. rather than relying on a distant impression shaped by media clips.
Demographics mattered, but not in the simplistic way many people fear.. The study indicated that the hands-on experience improved outcomes across genders. though initial comfort differed: men reported higher baseline comfort than women across most contexts.. The improvements, however, rose at similar rates for both groups, with gaps narrowing in some scenarios like factory and office.
Age effects were more nuanced.. Children didn’t necessarily start from the same baseline as adults. particularly for factory settings where limited exposure may have influenced perceptions.. After the experience. some gaps persisted. but other areas changed more strongly—children showed notable gains in office comfort. and they entered home-related ratings more favorably than older adults.
Prior exposure also mattered.. Participants who had previously driven Spot—mostly robotics professionals—started with higher comfort across the board.. Yet after the session, participants with no prior exposure “caught up” in terms of comfort.. That points to a key practical implication: interactive demos may compress the advantage of prior familiarity better than images and videos alone.
Excitement, not nervousness—and a shift toward companionship
The post-interaction emotional data skewed positive.. Excitement was reported by the majority of participants, happiness appeared frequently, and nervousness was comparatively rare.. When visitors were asked what stood out. many mentioned how Spot handled terrain—steps. tight spaces. and uneven ground—and the robot’s expressive tilt movements. which some participants described in animal-like or dance-like terms.
A smaller slice of responses highlighted a more human reaction: some people worried about “hurting” the robot. or found certain behaviors a bit silly in a way that still triggered real emotion.. That mix of curiosity and concern reads like something important for future deployments: trust isn’t only technical.. It’s emotional calibration.
The biggest behavioral signal came from what people wanted robots to do.. Before driving, answers clustered around domestic assistance and hazardous or heavy labor.. After driving, domestic help remained prominent—but entertainment and play rose sharply, and companionship appeared more often.. Meanwhile, references to hazardous or industrial tasks declined among those who had operated Spot.. The interpretation here is straightforward: operating a robot makes its everyday “personality” feel more concrete. and that changes how people imagine its future.
In the long run. Misryoum suggests. acceptance won’t be built only through passive exposure like videos. museum signage. or press coverage.. The real question is whether people get enough agency to form their own expectations.. If comfort with Spot can rise quickly in homes. hospitals. and offices—places where ambivalence tends to run highest—then hands-on interaction may become a necessary step in robotics adoption. not just a marketing flourish.
The Robot Lab also doubled as a conversation starter.. Visitors seemed to enjoy speaking with robotics experts. and for many. the chance to ask questions was as distinctive as the chance to drive.. Whether these attitude shifts will last remains unanswered—but the direction and consistency across age and gender make a strong case that public robotics shouldn’t be purely observational.
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