Design and Implementation of Kawaii Robotic Gadgets in Virtual Spaces by Japanese and American University Students in a Remote Collaboration Project

Abstract

This paper describes our educational project using remote collaboration related to the design and implementation of virtual Kawaii robots and spaces by Japanese and American university students. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to change our planned 7-week collaboration from in-person to virtual with a resultant change in the target product of our collaboration from real robots to virtual robots. Based on our new plan, students designed virtual spaces with robot pairs, proposed evaluation items for the robot pairs, evaluated their designs, and analyzed the results. The students designed each robot pair with the goal that one robot would be more kawaii and the other would be less kawaii due to a variation in a single attribute such as shape or color. The evaluation instrument used adjective pairs that were suitable to evaluate the affective values of the robot pairs and the virtual spaces the robots occupied. Through the design experience, students learned a lot about Kawaii Engineering and affective evaluation, which gave them a deeper understanding of Japanese culture from the viewpoint of Kansei/Affective Engineering. It is shown that understanding the role of "kawaii" for robotic gadget design is possible for students with various cultural background even under the virtual environment by employing our educational approach. This is a useful example of remote collaboration for education on Kansei Engineering. This paper is extended from the manuscript in the proceedings of ISASE 2021.