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Evaluating Transferable Emotion Expressions for Zoomorphic Social Robots using VR Prototyping

Shaun Macdonald, Robin Bretin, Salma ElSayed

TL;DR

This work leveraged virtual reality rapid prototyping with passive haptic interaction to conduct a broad mixed-methods evaluation of emotion expression modalities and participatory prototyping of multimodal expressions, finding differences in recognisability, effectiveness and user empathy between modalities.

Abstract

Zoomorphic robots have the potential to offer companionship and well-being as accessible, low-maintenance alternatives to pet ownership. Many such robots, however, feature limited emotional expression, restricting their potential for rich affective relationships with everyday domestic users. Additionally, exploring this design space using hardware prototyping is obstructed by physical and logistical constraints. We leveraged virtual reality rapid prototyping with passive haptic interaction to conduct a broad mixed-methods evaluation of emotion expression modalities and participatory prototyping of multimodal expressions. We found differences in recognisability, effectiveness and user empathy between modalities while highlighting the importance of facial expressions and the benefits of combining animal-like and unambiguous modalities. We use our findings to inform promising directions for the affective zoomorphic robot design and potential implementations via hardware modification or augmented reality, then discuss how VR prototyping makes this field more accessible to designers and researchers.

Evaluating Transferable Emotion Expressions for Zoomorphic Social Robots using VR Prototyping

TL;DR

This work leveraged virtual reality rapid prototyping with passive haptic interaction to conduct a broad mixed-methods evaluation of emotion expression modalities and participatory prototyping of multimodal expressions, finding differences in recognisability, effectiveness and user empathy between modalities.

Abstract

Zoomorphic robots have the potential to offer companionship and well-being as accessible, low-maintenance alternatives to pet ownership. Many such robots, however, feature limited emotional expression, restricting their potential for rich affective relationships with everyday domestic users. Additionally, exploring this design space using hardware prototyping is obstructed by physical and logistical constraints. We leveraged virtual reality rapid prototyping with passive haptic interaction to conduct a broad mixed-methods evaluation of emotion expression modalities and participatory prototyping of multimodal expressions. We found differences in recognisability, effectiveness and user empathy between modalities while highlighting the importance of facial expressions and the benefits of combining animal-like and unambiguous modalities. We use our findings to inform promising directions for the affective zoomorphic robot design and potential implementations via hardware modification or augmented reality, then discuss how VR prototyping makes this field more accessible to designers and researchers.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 42 sections, 11 figures, 5 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Research Contributions
  3. Related Work
  4. Emotional Encounters with Animals and Zoomorphic Robots
  5. Exploration of Emotion Conveyance in HRI
  6. Prior Use of Extended Reality Technology for Prototyping, User Studies and HRI
  7. Methodology and Study Design
  8. Study Design
  9. Participants
  10. Apparatus
  11. Virtual Environment Design and Interaction
  12. Study Procedure
  13. Stage 1: Pre-Study Procedure
  14. Stage 2: Study Procedure
  15. Stage 3: Post-Study Procedure
  16. ...and 27 more sections

Figures (11)

  • Figure 1: Prominent zoomorphic robots from commercial and research spheres, which emulate animals with abstract or specific designs.
  • Figure 2: Robots used in contemporary research which compared and evaluated multiple emotion expression modalities.
  • Figure 3: Screenshots displaying the VE and graphical interfaces.
  • Figure 4: Experimental procedure and apparatus.
  • Figure 5: Left: Summary statistics of recognition accuracy for each modality and emotion combination. Right: Interaction plot showing how recognition accuracy (y-axis) of each modality varies by the emotion expressed (x-axis).
  • ...and 6 more figures