Exploring the affect of abstract motion in social human-robot interaction

We present our exploration of the emotional impact that abstract robot motion has on human-robot interaction (HRI). We argue for the importance of designing for the fundamental characteristics of physical robot motion as distinct from designing the robot's visual appearance or functional context. We discuss our design approach, the creation of an abstract robotic motion platform that is nearly formless and affordance-less, and our evaluation of the affect abstract motion had on more than thirty participants which interacted with our robotic platform in a series of studies. We detail our results and explain how different styles of robot motion were mapped to emotional responses in human observers. We believe that our findings can inform and provide important insight into the purposeful use of motion as a design tool in social human-robot interaction.