Toward Human-Robot Sharing Space: A Conceptual Framework and Scoping Review of Spatial Design Knowledge

As service robots increasingly enter public buildings such as hospitals and offices, human-robot sharing space has emerged as a pivotal topic in architectural design field, yet its relevant theoretical framework remains underdeveloped and incomplete. Existing frameworks—including Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC), and Human-Robot Coexistence—have advanced research on interaction, coordination, and safety, but most regard the built environment as a passive backdrop, overlooking its active design value. This review retrieved literatures from 2000 to 2026 across four databases (Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, and ScienceDirect) and analyzed 183 core publications using CiteSpace, systematically synthesizing the interdisciplinary knowledge in this field. The study introduces "Human-Robot Sharing Space (HRSS)" as an independent conceptual framework, repositioning the built environment from an interactive background to a core design variable while clarifying its boundaries with other traditional frameworks. Through bibliometric analysis, it reveals the field’s evolutionary trajectory from basic technical exploration to scenario-specific refinement. Finally, five systematic gaps in current research are identified: interdisciplinary theoretical integration, transferability to real-world scenarios, multidimensional evaluation indicators, coverage of architectural typology, and longitudinal empirical studies. This review bridges the gap between robotic technology and architectural design needs, providing a theoretical foundation for constructing an environment-centric, scale-inclusive, and practical design framework for HRSS.