Making Robot Ecologies Visible: Toward a Taxonomy for Gibsonian Human–Robot Interface Design

Robots increasingly operate in everyday human environments, where interaction depends on users understanding what the robot can perceive and act on---its perceived ecology or Umwelt. Current human-robot interfaces rarely support this understanding: they rely largely on symbolic cues that reveal little about how environmental structures shape the robot’s actions. Drawing on Gibson’s ecological psychology, we propose a shift from symbolic communication toward ecological specification in interface design. We introduce the Gibsonian Human–Robot Interface Design (GHRID) taxonomy, which organizes interface properties across three facets---basic descriptive, context and evaluation, Gibsonian-specific---and identifies key ecological dimensions such as affordance grounding, temporal coupling, and Umwelt exposure. Finally, we outline a research program testing whether "GHRID-high" designs improve users’ understanding of robots’ behavior-driving states and processes.