Empowering Robot Designers: A Digital Tool for Early-Stage Social Robot Prototyping and Communication
Matthew Charles Milton, Shabnam FakhrHosseini, Chaiwoo Lee, Joseph F. Coughlin · 2024
While social robots promise to benefit people with emotional and informational needs, persistent concerns exist around their ability to effectively manage expectations and meet user needs. In this study, a digital toolkit was developed as a possible solution to support the early-stage design of social robots and address the current absence of a structured, research-informed approach. The prototype toolkit provides an interactive and visual process to assist designers of different backgrounds and varying degrees of technical knowledge; and to guide the development team throughout iterative ideation, prototyping, and communication regarding new social robot designs. The toolkit employs established human-robot interaction principles and insights from existing research to incorporate a guiding framework in the design process. This paper presents key prototype features, an outline of the user flow, a preliminary expert evaluation of the tool’s concept and usability, and future aims.