Design guidelines and tools for creating believable motion for personal robots

Robots use their movement to interact with the user. Their movement is a crucial part in designing the interfaces of personal robots. It has a major impact on how a robot is perceived by the user interacting with it. Subtle flaws in the movement can create a repelling feeling and therefore affect negatively the interaction. On the other hand, carefully designed little quirks can give the robot personality and make it more interesting. A possible relationship between appearance and motion on how a device is perceived is described by the ´Uncanny Valley´ conceived by Prof. M. Mori in 1970. It is widely used as a design guideline for creating humanoid interface robots. It does not, however, describe the impact that the quality of movements has on the perception and the believability of a character. Conclusive frameworks for the animation of robots are rare and are often adapted from cartoon or computer animation. This paper presents a refined design guideline for the motion of robotic characters with respect to the design requirements naturalness, adequateness and development over time. Furthermore, we created a set of tools that eases the process of designing the movement by improving on common animation techniques such as key-framed or scripted animations. The tools preserve the freedom of the animator to define specific expressive motions while at the same time offering the full power of scripting technology.