Designing Personas for Expressive Robots

Abstract

Imbuing robots with personality has been shown to be an effective design approach in HRI, promoting user trust and acceptance. We explore personality design in a non-anthropomorphic voice-assisted home robot. Our design approach developed three distinct robot personas: Butler, Buddy, and Sidekick, intended to differ in proactivity and emotional impact. Persona differences were signaled to users by a combination of humanoid (speech, intonation), and indirect cues (colors and movement). We use Big Five personality theory to evaluate perceived differences between personas in an exploratory Wizard of Oz study. Participants were largely able to recognize underlying personality traits expressed through these cue combinations in ways that were consistent with our design goals. The proactive Buddy persona was judged as more Extravert than the more passive Sidekick persona, and the Butler persona was perceived as more Conscientious and less Neurotic than either Buddy or Butler personas. Users also had clear preferences between different personas; they wanted robots that mimicked but accentuated their own personality. Results suggest that future designs might exploit abstract cues to signal personality traits.

Machine Body Language: Expressing a Smart Speaker’s Activity with Intelligible Physical Motion

“…The voice does a lot too in terms of personality but with added movements it's just even more." These associations of personality and projecting human-like characters onto QUBI resonates with previous research on people's interactions with social robots [6,18,67,75].…”

Designing Dynamic Robot Characters to Improve Robot-Human Communications

“…Gestures accompanying verbal output by the robot can determine the level of its perceived extraversion [2] and therefore help shape its personality. While head gestures seem to have an engaging effect on users [20] and can convey emotional states like anger to the user [1], simply turning towards the user can signal attention [42].…”

“…A well-defined robot personality can help users understand the robot's reasoning. Mimicking human behaviors helps engagement and trust but does not have to be exact [42].…”

“…What personality should a robot have? Studies indicate that the preferred personality amplifies the user's traits [42]. Extroverts, for example, using more vivid and more frequent gestures during a conversation, also accept robots approaching closer during interaction [29].…”

“…How should robot personalities be designed? Whittaker et al [42] suggest using classic persona design [11]. Starting from a persona, designers can combine personality traits that make robot behavior more predictable.…”