Breakbot

Abstract

Workplace injuries commonly result from long periods of inactivity during computer use. Software exists to help remind people to take breaks but is often ineffective. On the basis of design research performed in an office environment, we propose an emotionally expressive companion robot to encourage employees to take breaks and socialize more regularly. Initial reactions to our design were positive, and encourage further investigation.

Designing Robots in the Wild: In situ Prototype Evaluation for a Break Management Robot

“…Prototyping has been less prevalent in HRI due to the challenge of quickly constructing diverse, temporary, yet robust and capable platforms (e.g., Bartneck & Hu, 2004;Lee et al, 2009;Reeder et al, 2010;Šabanovic et al, 2011). The most well known prototyping technique in HRI is Wizard of Oz (WoZ), in which autonomous robotic behavior is simulated by a person controlling the robot with the aim of measuring user reactions (Dautenhahn, 2007;Riek, 2012).…”

“…Existing technological interventions in this domain include various computer applications using verbal, audio, or visual cues to remind people to take a break (e.g., Morris, Brush, & Meyers, 2008), as well as the Breakaway prototype (Jafarinaimi et al, 2005), an embodied ambient display for break management. We provide more information on existing break management technologies and their comparison with our system in prior work (Reeder et al, 2010;Šabanović et al, 2011). Research on socially assistive robotics (e.g., Kidd & Breazeal, 2008;Tapus, Matarić, & Scassellati, 2007) suggests that embodied and socially interactive technologies can have stronger positive effects on behavioral change and compliance in users than computerbased technologies.…”

“…All three studies were performed with staff members at Indiana University, Bloomington, who engaged in regular computer use for 6 or more hours a day throughout the workweek. We first performed an exploratory study of the office, which allowed us to document the significance of break management for our population, learn more about the work environment, and evaluate a non-functional physical prototype of a break management robot (Reeder et al, 2010). The following two studies involved the development and testing of two functioning physical prototypes in regards to how users would react to and make sense of specific aspects of the robot's design and to further explore use in context.…”

“…Through this process, we also gained insights about the evaluation of HRI prototypes "in the wild" as a way to contribute to our understanding of the socially situated dynamics of HRI that can be a resource for further design. As the details of the first two studies have been published previously (Reeder et al, 2010;Šabanović et al, 2011), we summarize relevant insights here and provide a more detailed account of the third iteration of our break management prototype. Table 1 summarizes the main aims and findings, while Figure 2 shows the timelines of the three design iterations.…”

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

“…More abstract methods such as colors and sounds have similarly been used for communicating emotion to represent state. For example, both the Breakbot and AIBO robots use color in this way, and the Sony AIBO further uses puppy-like sounds [8,23]. Our work follows this overall approach by using affect and emotion, via a robotic tail, to encourage attribution of affect for the purpose of conveying high-level robot state.…”