Designing and Evaluating the Face of Lil’Flo: an Affordable Social Rehabilitation Robot

We introduce Lil'Flo, an affordable robot for pediatric upper extremity rehabilitation. We present the design and fabrication methodology of the head and face of the robot, the central design element for emotional expression. Through a guided interview with 10 subjects, a number of faces which have a clear sentiment associated with them are identified. The data suggest that a digital face, characterized by eyes and a mouth, can express sadness, happiness, surprise, and mischievousness well, but that finer emotions, e.g., differentiating between happy and very happy can be difficult. The data fail to show that a robot with a dynamic face is viewed more positively than one with a static face. The results of numerical sentiment analysis and open ended questions provide a design direction for our face and a general idea of simple face designs which have a clear sentiment.