A Dog Tail for Utility Robots: Exploring Affective Properties of Tail Movement

Abstract

Abstract. We present a dog-tail interface for utility robots, as a means of communicating high-level robotic state through affect. This interface leverages people's general knowledge of dogs and their tails (e.g., wagging means happy) to communicate robotic state in an easy to understand way. In this paper, we present the details of our tail construction, and the results of a study which explored a base case of people's reactions to the tail: how various parameters of tail movements and configuration influence perception of the robot's zoomorphized affective state. Our study indicated that people were able to interpret a range of affective states from various tail configurations and gestures, and in summary, we present a set of guidelines for mapping tail parameters to intended perceived affective robotic state.

It’s Not the Way You Look, It’s How You Move: Validating a General Scheme for Robot Affective Behaviour

“…regardless of robot expressivity. These results are consistent with the findings of [26], who showed that (a) high speed of tail movements increased perceived arousal of a robot, and (b) low tail height decreased perceived valence. The latter could be mapped to the Reduce Yourself parameter of the Avoidance DP group.…”

“…In a recent study, Singh and Young [26] investigated how a dog-inspired tail interface can be applied to utility robots and communicate high-level robotic states through affect. The study indicated that people were able to interpret a range of affective states from various tail configurations and gestures.…”

“…However, humanoid robots represent a highly restricted physical form. Some researchers define more general high-level design patterns for creating an emotionally expressive behavior in robots [12,22,26] but have struggled to establish their general utility [17].…”

Expressing Emotions through Color, Sound, and Vibration with an Appearance-Constrained Social Robot

“…Unfortunately, such robots are high cost and technically difficult to design. To date, a range of robots currently in use for applications such as search and rescue and domestic purposes (cleaning robots) are not designed to be anthropomorphic, meaning that their abilities in affective expression are highly restricted [7,6,33]. While such robots may not require rich expressivity, they do need to have certain abilities to show affection.…”

Seven Years after the Manifesto: Literature Review and Research Directions for Technologies in Animal Computer Interaction

“…Gergely et al [57] found that dogs act socially towards UMOs from expectations of the system over a short period, offering up an indication towards social robots for dogs. Previous to this work, Singh & Yong [119] used robotic tails on robots which could move positions (wag, raise, lower and hold straight) to investigate dog tail communication states; this work is yet to be tested with other dogs to draw conclusive results. Westerlaken et al [65] used a design observational study with dogs and robots, applying different variations to the robotic devices, such as puzzle or treat-dispenser cases, and with tangible objects that produced sound or smell.…”