Exploring the Design Space of Robot Appearance and Behavior in an Attention-Seeking `Living Room' Scenario for a Robot Companion

This paper presents the results of video based human robot interaction (HRI) trials which investigated people's perceptions of different robot appearances and associated attention seeking features and behaviors displayed by the robot. The methodological approach highlights the "holistic" and embodied nature of robot appearance and behavior. Results show that people tend to rate a particular behavior less favorably when the behavior is not consistent with the robot's appearance. It is shown how participants' ratings of robot dynamic appearance are influenced by the robot's behavior. Relating participants' dynamic appearance ratings of individual robots to independently rated static appearance provides support for the left hand side of Mori's proposed "uncanny valley" diagram. We exemplify how to rate individual elements of a particular robot's behavior and then assess the contribution of those elements to the overall perception of the robot by people. Suggestions for future work are outlined.