Is a furry pet more engaging? Comparing the effect of the material on the body surface of robot pets

Abstract

The development of attractive robot pets calls for features that the users find more and more appealing and animal-like. There are a number of design issues that need to be addressed: How can we design robot pets to make them look more real? How can we make robot pets more easy to use? How can we make them more interactive and their human-robot relationship more natural? These problems should be solved as soon as possible to satisfy the rising demand of this kind of robots. Though morphology is a primary design decision, the importance of the material covering the body surface has somehow being neglected. In this paper, we focus on the role of this material for robot pets since we believe it is a fundamental design factor. In our study we compare two different materials for the body surface of a pet robot and consider five categories (friendliness, enjoyment, attractive, presence and immersion). © Springer International Publishing 2013.