Research could guide the future design of social robots

University of Glasgow researchers used augmented reality to rapidly test combinations of faces and voices overlaid on a Qoobo social robot, finding that animal-like and anime-style faces paired with matching sounds maximized emotional engagement. The study of 24 volunteers found faces mattered more than sounds for conveying emotion, that unintelligible 'animalese' sounds were still well-liked, and that readability of emotion didn't strongly predict design preference. The work, led by Dr Shaun Macdonald and Josh Yip, builds on their AZRA augmented-reality prototyping system and will be presented at the ACM MobileHCI conference.

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