Design and Evaluation of an Affective, Continuum Robotic Appendage for Child-Robot Interaction

We introduce a robotic appendage (a "fin") for a non-humanoid mobile robot that can communicate affect to child collaborators. Affective configurations were generated from a collection of cartoon images that featured characters with floppy or bunny ears. These images were classified according to the six Ekman emotions, analyzed to create ideal emotion configurations, and validated with a user study. From these configurations, we designed multiple continuum robot fin appendages and evaluated them based on (a) their ability to achieve the generated affect configurations, and (b) their durability for sustained use in child-robot interaction studies.