Sharing Feelings via Mini Robot Gestures

Abstract

Sharing feelings is essential to empathic communication. This demo allows participants to send and receive emotional signals using a pair of small robots. The robots' gestures take advantage of the mobility and embodied qualities of robots, and explore a new modality of social signaling that could enhance what is possible through purely digital interfaces. This prototype is part of a larger inquiry into the expressive capabilities of distributed bot systems for empathic communication and connection. Participants will be able to engage in a robot-based emotional exchange using a mobile-device-based interface that offers 6 pre-set robot gestures.