Bioluminescence-Inspired Human-Robot Interaction : Designing Expressive Lights that Affect Human’s Willingness to Interact with a Robot

Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by a living organism. It, as a means of communication, is of importance for the survival of various creatures. Inspired by bioluminescent light behaviors, we explore the design of expressive lights and evaluate the effect of such expressions on a human’s perception of and attitude toward an appearance-constrained robot. Such robots are in urgent need of finding effective ways to present themselves and communicate their intentions due to a lack of social expressivity. We particularly focus on the expression of attractiveness and hostility because a robot would need to be able to attract or keep away human users in practical human-robot interaction (HRI) scenarios. In this work, we installed an LED lighting system on a Roomba robot and conducted a series of two experiments. We first worked through a structured approach to determine the best light expression designs for the robot to show attractiveness and hostility. This resulted in four recommended light expressions. Further, we performed a verification study to examine the effectiveness of such light expressions in a typical HRI context. On the basis of the findings, we offer design guidelines for expressive lights that HRI researchers and practitioners could readily employ.