Robot expressionism through cartooning

Abstract

We present a new technique for human-robot interaction called robot expressionism through cartooning. We suggest that robots utilise cartoon-art techniques such as simplified and exaggerated facial expressions, stylised text, and icons for intuitive social interaction with humans. We discuss practical mixed reality solutions that allow robots to augment themselves or their surroundings with cartoon art content. Our effort is part of what we call robot expressionism, a conceptual approach to the design and analysis of robotic interfaces that focuses on providing intuitive insight into a robotic state as well as artistic quality of interaction. Our paper discusses a variety of ways that allow robots to express cartoon art, and details a test bed design, implementation, and preliminary evaluation. We describe our test bed, Jeeves, which uses a Roomba, an iRobot vacuum cleaner robot, and a mixed-reality system as a platform for rapid prototyping of cartoon-art interfaces. Finally, we present a set of interaction content scenarios which use the Jeeves prototype: trash roomba, the recycle police, and clean tracks, as well as initial user evaluation of our approach.

A Dog Tail for Utility Robots: Exploring Affective Properties of Tail Movement

“…One such aspect of this communication is people's peripheral awareness of robots' actions and motions, a communication channel which has proven important for human-human interaction in work roles similar to utility robots; for example, as office assistants, robots should be as non-intrusive as possible yet still provide ambient awareness of their tasks [10,32]. In this paper we introduce the use of a dog tail for robots as a peripheral awareness communication mechanism (Fig.…”

Where Robots and Virtual Agents Meet

“…Mixed reality agents, square in the middle of Milgram's continuum and the latest addition to the wider area of human-agent interaction, have so far only reported findings of preliminary user studies ( [20] and [66] for MiRA and Jeeves, respectively), and no dedicated studies to inform the grounding of mixed reality agents in a theoretical framework-or even just to validate the feasibility of the approach-currently exist. …”

“…The focus of Young et al's Jeeves project [66]-which similarly combines a robot (the iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner) with a cartoon-like character-is instead to investigate the use of cartoon art, i.e. simplified and exaggerated facial expressions, in support of intuitive social interaction with humans.…”

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