User-Centered Robot Head Design: a Sensing Computing Interaction Platform for Robotics Research (SCIPRR)

We developed and evaluated a novel humanoid head, SCIPRR (Sensing, Computing, Interacting Platform for Robotics Research). SCIPRR is a head shell that was iteratively created with additive manufacturing. SCIPRR contains internal scaffolding that allows sensors, small form computers, and a back-projection system to display an animated face on a front-facing screen. SCIPRR was developed using User Centered Design principles and evaluated using three different methods. First, we created multiple, small-scale prototypes through additive manufacturing and performed polling and refinement of the overall head shape. Second, we performed usability evaluations of expert HRI mechanics as they swapped sensors and computers within the the SCIPRR head. Finally, we ran and analyzed an experiment to evaluate how much novices would like a robot with our head design to perform different social and traditional robot tasks. We made both major and minor changes after each evaluation and iteration. Overall, expert users liked the SCIPRR head and novices wanted a robot with the SCIPRR head to perform more tasks (including social tasks) than a more traditional robot.