BioMORF: A Soft Robotic Skin to Increase Biomorphism and Enable Nonverbal Communication

Abstract

In this work, we introduce a biomorphic soft robotic skin for a hexapod robot platform and a Central Pattern Generator (CPG) based neural controller to generate respiratory-like motions on the skin. The design enables visio-haptic nonverbal communication between humans and robots and improves the robot’s aesthetics by enhancing its biomorphic qualities. We investigated if the soft robotic skin could increase user ratings of the robot’s warmth (RoSAS) and reported trust levels during interaction (MDMT). Contrary to our expectations and earlier findings, we did not find any increase in neither warmth nor trust from adding the soft robotic part. Furthermore, comments received from study participants indicate that trust in the robot is influenced by multiple factors, including appearance, movements, haptic qualities, and contextual factors. Based on our results, we propose directions for further research on pneumatically actuated soft robotic skins as means for nonverbal communication in human-robot interaction.