Character Actor

Abstract

How might an actuated car seat become an expressive robot? To explore the possibilities of this novel interaction, we conducted a full design exploration from prototyping to validation, drawing on methods for embodied physical interaction design. First, we applied physical and digital puppeteering techniques to explore how a car seat can display emotional affect through movement with limited degrees of freedom in a semi-structured design workshop. Second, prototyped emotions were formalized with the Laban Effort framework and translated into computer animations. Third, we tested if lay users understood the expressions communicated by the animations in an online validation study on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants generally agreed with our interpretation of six prototyped expressive states for the robot car seat (Neutral, Aggressive, Confident, Cool, Excited, and Quirky), and reported quantitative and qualitative reactions to each including perceived safety, which varied across conditions. Participants reported more implied cognition for higher valence expressions, and also were more likely to agree with our design intent. This specific case of physical interaction design and evaluation serves as a vignette for how to design and validate novel physical expressions in non-anthropomorphic robot interfaces.