• Archives of design research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.253-262
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• 2003

This article suggest a research method to extract user needs for designing social interface of a service robot. We first discuss social design issues for the service robot. Then we present a novel survey method for the service robot based on the social design issues and robot characteristics. Finally we discuss survey results, answered by Korean customers, of functional needs, social characteristics, product design for a home service robot. It is analyzed that Korean customers expect the image of home service robot as “a late teenager female who helps household work effectively”

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.203-215
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• 2023

Social robots, which are mainly used by individuals, emphasize the importance of human-robot relationships (HRR) more compared to other types of robots. Emotional expression in robots is one of the key factors that imbue HRR with value; emotions are mainly expressed through the face. However, because of cultural and preference differences, the desired robot facial expressions differ subtly depending on the user. It was expected that a robot facial expression customization tool may mitigate such difficulties and consequently improve HRR. To prove this, we created a robot facial expression customization tool and a prototype robot. We implemented a suitable emotion engine for generating robot facial expressions in a dynamic human-robot interaction setting. We conducted experiments and the users agreed that the availability of a customized version of the robot has a more positive effect on HRR than a predefined version of the robot. Moreover, we suggest recommendations for future improvements of the customization process of robot facial expression.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.295-300
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• 2017

The study evaluates exploration of social robot's role which can emotionally communicate with human as an alternative to heal psychological isolation for single-person households. At first, I conduct a study on literatured to understand the definition and characteristics of social robot then analyze the current situation and future prospects. Based on this, I organized the requirements of social robot in aspect of user experience through in-depth interview of twenties single-person households living in the metropolitan area who could be potential customers. As a result every subject require social robot specialized to them through accumulated interaction. On the other hand, degree of attachment with social robot is different from subjects. Hear by I realize every subject require social robot to different and various functions according to their lifestyle and personality. Therefore I could draw conclusions and implications from this study that technical development in aspect of personalized user experience is necessary for social robot to settle in to human's life in the future.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.179-185
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• 2019

A core technology of social robot is voice recognition and dialogue engine technology, but too much money is needed for development and an implementation of robot's conversation function is difficult resulting from insufficiency of performance. Dialogue function's implementation between human and robot can be possible due to advance of cloud AI technology and several company's supply of their open API. In this paper, current intelligent social robot technology trend is investigated and effective social robot system architecture is designed. Also an effective analysis and design method of social robot system will be presented by showing user requirement analysis using object-oriented method, flowchart and screen design.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.397-412
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• 2023

In order for social robots to take root in human life, it is important to consider the technical implementation of social robots and human psychology toward social robots. This study aimed to derive potential social robot clusters based on the emotions consumers feel about social robot appearance design, and to identify and compare important design characteristics and emotional differences of each cluster. In our study, we established a social robot emotion framework to measure and evaluate the emotions consumers feel about social robots, and evaluated the emotions of social robot designs based on the semantic differential method, an kansei engineering approach. We classified 30 social robots into 4 clusters by conducting a multidimensional scaling method and K-means cluster analysis based on the emotion evaluation results, confirmed the characteristics of design elements for each cluster, and conducted a comparative analysis on consumer emotions. We proposed a strategic direction for successful social robot design and development from a human-centered perspective based on the design characteristics and emotional differences derived for each cluster.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.129-149
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• 2021

Recently, interest in social robots that can socially interact with humans is increasing. Thanks to the development of ICT technology, social robots have become easier to provide personalized services and emotional connection to individuals, and the role of social robots is drawing attention as a means to solve modern social problems and the resulting decline in the quality of individual lives. Along with the interest in social robots, the spread of social robots is also increasing significantly. Many companies are introducing robot products to the market to target various target markets, but so far there is no clear trend leading the market. Accordingly, there are more and more attempts to differentiate robots through the design of social robots. In particular, anthropomorphism has been studied importantly in social robot design, and many approaches have been attempted to anthropomorphize social robots to produce positive effects. However, there is a lack of research that systematically describes the mechanism by which anthropomorphism for social robots is formed. Most of the existing studies have focused on verifying the positive effects of the anthropomorphism of social robots on consumers. In addition, the formation of anthropomorphism of social robots may vary depending on the individual's motivation or temperament, but there are not many studies examining this. A vague understanding of anthropomorphism makes it difficult to derive design optimal points for shaping the anthropomorphism of social robots. The purpose of this study is to verify the mechanism by which the anthropomorphism of social robots is formed. This study confirmed the effect of the human-likeness of social robots(Within-subjects) and the construal level of consumers(Between-subjects) on the formation of anthropomorphism through an experimental study of 3×2 mixed design. Research hypotheses on the mechanism by which anthropomorphism is formed were presented, and the hypotheses were verified by analyzing data from a sample of 206 people. The first hypothesis in this study is that the higher the human-likeness of the robot, the higher the level of anthropomorphism for the robot. Hypothesis 1 was supported by a one-way repeated measures ANOVA and a post hoc test. The second hypothesis in this study is that depending on the construal level of consumers, the effect of human-likeness on the level of anthropomorphism will be different. First, this study predicts that the difference in the level of anthropomorphism as human-likeness increases will be greater under high construal condition than under low construal condition.Second, If the robot has no human-likeness, there will be no difference in the level of anthropomorphism according to the construal level. Thirdly,If the robot has low human-likeness, the low construal level condition will make the robot more anthropomorphic than the high construal level condition. Finally, If the robot has high human-likeness, the high construal levelcondition will make the robot more anthropomorphic than the low construal level condition. We performed two-way repeated measures ANOVA to test these hypotheses, and confirmed that the interaction effect of human-likeness and construal level was significant. Further analysis to specifically confirm interaction effect has also provided results in support of our hypotheses. The analysis shows that the human-likeness of the robot increases the level of anthropomorphism of social robots, and the effect of human-likeness on anthropomorphism varies depending on the construal level of consumers. This study has implications in that it explains the mechanism by which anthropomorphism is formed by considering the human-likeness, which is the design attribute of social robots, and the construal level of consumers, which is the way of thinking of individuals. We expect to use the findings of this study as the basis for design optimization for the formation of anthropomorphism in social robots.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.55-78
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• 2021

Tosolve complex and diverse social problems and ensure the quality of life of individuals, social robots that can interact with humans are attracting attention. In the past, robots were recognized as beings that provide labor force as they put into industrial sites on behalf of humans. However, the concept of today's robot has been extended to social robots that coexist with humans and enable social interaction with the advent of Smart technology, which is considered an important driver in most industries. Specifically, there are service robots that respond to customers, the robots that have the purpose of edutainment, and the emotionalrobots that can interact with humans intimately. However, popularization of robots is not felt despite the current information environment in the modern ICT service environment and the 4th industrial revolution. Considering social interaction with users which is an important function of social robots, not only the technology of the robots but also other factors should be considered. The design elements of the robot are more important than other factors tomake consumers purchase essentially a social robot. In fact, existing studies on social robots are at the level of proposing "robot development methodology" or testing the effects provided by social robots to users in pieces. On the other hand, consumer emotions felt from the robot's appearance has an important influence in the process of forming user's perception, reasoning, evaluation and expectation. Furthermore, it can affect attitude toward robots and good feeling and performance reasoning, etc. Therefore, this study aims to verify the effect of appearance of social robot and consumer emotions on consumer's attitude toward social robot. At this time, a social robot design evaluation model is constructed by combining heterogeneous data from different sources. Specifically, the three quantitative indicator data for the appearance of social robots from the ABOT Database is included in the model. The consumer emotions of social robot design has been collected through (1) the existing design evaluation literature and (2) online buzzsuch as product reviews and blogs, (3) qualitative interviews for social robot design. Later, we collected the score of consumer emotions and attitudes toward various social robots through a large-scale consumer survey. First, we have derived the six major dimensions of consumer emotions for 23 pieces of detailed emotions through dimension reduction methodology. Then, statistical analysis was performed to verify the effect of derived consumer emotionson attitude toward social robots. Finally, the moderated regression analysis was performed to verify the effect of quantitatively collected indicators of social robot appearance on the relationship between consumer emotions and attitudes toward social robots. Interestingly, several significant moderation effects were identified, these effects are visualized with two-way interaction effect to interpret them from multidisciplinary perspectives. This study has theoretical contributions from the perspective of empirically verifying all stages from technical properties to consumer's emotion and attitudes toward social robots by linking the data from heterogeneous sources. It has practical significance that the result helps to develop the design guidelines based on consumer emotions in the design stage of social robot development.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.243-262
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• 2022

In this study, eye tracking was used for the appearance of the robot during the social robot design study. During the research, each part of the social robot was designated as AOI (Areas of Interests), and the user's attitude was measured through a design evaluation questionnaire to construct a design research model of the social robot. The data used in this study are Fixation, First Visit, Total Viewed, and Revisits as eye tracking indicators, and AOI (Areas of Interests) was designed with the face, eyes, lips, and body of the social robot. And as design evaluation questionnaire questions, consumer beliefs such as Face-highlighted, Human-like, and Expressive of social robots were collected and as a dependent variable was attitude toward robots. Through this, we tried to discover the mechanism that specifically forms the user's attitude toward the robot, and to discover specific insights that can be referenced when designing the robot.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.1293-1301
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• 2017

Recent changes in social structure, such as nuclear family and personalization, are leading to personal and social problems, which may cause various problems due to negative emotional amplification. The absence of a family member who gives a sense of psychological stability in the past can be considered as a representative cause of the emotional difficulties of modern people. This personal and social problem is solved through the empathic interaction of the companion robot communication with users in daily life. In this study, we developed sophisticated empathic interaction design through prototyping of emotional robots. As a result, it was confirmed that the face interaction greatly affects the emotional interaction of the emotional robot and the interaction of the robot improves the emotional sense of the robot. This study has the theoretical and practical significance in that the emotional robot is made more sophisticated interaction and the guideline of the sympathetic interaction design is presented based on the experimental results.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.447-454
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• 2022

This paper presents the psychomotorik-based play activities executed by the social robot at home which helps children's social and emotional development. Based on the theory and practice of the psychomotorik therapy, the play activities were implemented in the close collaboration between psychmotorik experts, service designers and robotics engineers. The designed play activities are classified into four categories depending on the main areas of child development. The robotic system that can express verbal and nonverbal behaviors was developed in order to play games with children and but also to make children have continuous interest during the play activities with it. Finally, the psychomotorik-based play service scenario and interactive robot system were validated by the expert group from the domain of child psychotherapy. The evaluation results showed that the play service and the robot system were appropriately developed for children from the experts point of view.