A Survey on Robotic Vacuum Cleaners: Evaluation of Expressive Robotic Motions based on the Framework of Laban Effort Features for Robot Personality Design

摘要

The adoption of robotic vacuum cleaners (RVCs) has drastically increased. During interaction with these embodied autonomous agents, humans tend to ascribe certain personality traits to them even when the robot has a mechanoid appearance and low degree of freedom. As the social capabilities and the persuasiveness of robots increase, the design of robot personality will become important. This paper investigates the impact of expressive motions on people’s perception of robot personality. The framework of Laban Effort Features was implemented for a simple cleaning task. Movement features were programmed in iRobot Create2, and participants were asked to rate the robot’s personality in an online survey. The results indicated that Flow factor was closely associated with neuroticism ratings, Weight factor impacted both agreeableness and conscientiousness ratings, while Time factor impacted only the agreeableness ratings. Movement characteristics should be considered when designing personality into domestic service robots like RVCs, which are expected to operate in highly social settings.