The Sounds of Softness. Designing Sound for Human-Soft Robot Interaction

Abstract

In this article, we report on research and creative practice that explores the aesthetic interplay between movement and sound for soft robotics. Our inquiry seeks to interrogate what sound designs might be aesthetically engaging and appropriate for soft robotic movement in a social human-robot interaction setting. We present the design of a soft sound-producing robot, SONŌ, made of pliable and expandable silicone and three sound designs made for this robot. The article comprises an articulation of the underlying design process and results from two empirical interaction experiments (N = 66, N = 60) conducted to evaluate the sound designs. The sound designs did not have statistically significant effects on people’s perception of the social attributes of two different soft robots. Qualitative results, however, indicate that people’s interpretations of the sound designs depend on robot type.

Signalling Emotions with a Breathing Soft Robot

“…The study focuses on the feasibility of using breathing as a nonverbal means of expression and communication and examines if different breathing rates are perceived as expressing distinct emotions on the dimensional scales of pleasure, arousal and dominance. Extending recent work [12,13,14,15,16,17,18] showing that pneumatically actuated soft robots can be perceived as socially communicative agents, we developed a non-humanoid soft robot capable of altering its shape and movements to signal emotions. Signalled emotions are emotions that the robot engineer wants to show to the robot's interaction partner via the robotic interface, and intends the interaction partner to recognize as displayed [19].…”