“NAO Says”: Designing and Evaluating Multimodal Playful Interactions with the Humanoid Robot NAO

Abstract

NAO is a small humanoid robot which affords multimodal interaction through speech, non-verbal sounds, visual pattern recognition, gestures and touch. NAO can be animated to move its head, arms, legs in space and to manifest emotional reactions through dialogue, sounds, body movements and light effects. This paper reports on the design, implementation, play-testing and evaluation of a multimodal, playful interaction with NAO in two pre-studies and one pilot study with altogether 209 participants of all age groups. The application “NAO says” was designed based on the popular imitation game “Simon says”, in which three or more players follow the command “Simon says”. In “NAO says” the robot plays the role of Simon and asks the players to play a series of mini-games by imitating body movements and solving simple mathematical riddles. The design of “NAO says” focuses on creating an experience of a less constrained, playful interaction rather than following strict rules of the game. The paper describes the design of the game, the implementation in pilot studies and the results from three evaluations which investigated the perceptions of NAO as a game leader, and perceived psychological stress before and after the playful interaction with the robot. The results indicate that the robot was perceived as a friendly, joyful and pleasant interaction partner and that perceived stress was lower after playing the game.