From Pets to Robots: MojiKit as a Data-Informed Toolkit for Affective HRI Design
🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the fragmented and subjectively driven nature of affective behavior design in animal-inspired social robots, which often lacks systematic support. To bridge this gap, the authors analyze human-pet interaction videos, synthesize findings from literature, and conduct user interviews to construct a structured set of affective behavior reference cards. They further develop MojiKit—an integrated toolkit comprising these data-driven design resources, a pet-inspired robotic prototype named MomoBot, and a no-code behavior authoring studio. As the first data-driven resource for pet-inspired affective interaction design, MojiKit was evaluated in a co-creation workshop with 18 participants, who generated 35 distinct affective interaction patterns that extended beyond their personal pet-owning experiences. The toolkit significantly lowers technical barriers while enhancing design diversity and creative autonomy.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Designing affective behaviors for animal-inspired social robots often relies on intuition and personal experience, leading to fragmented outcomes. To provide more systematic guidance, we first coded and analyzed human-pet interaction videos, validated insights through literature and interviews, and created structured reference cards that map the design space of pet-inspired affective interactions. Building on this, we developed MojiKit, a toolkit combining reference cards, a zoomorphic robot prototype (MomoBot), and a behavior control studio. We evaluated MojiKit in co-creation workshops with 18 participants, finding that MojiKit helped them design 35 affective interaction patterns beyond their own pet experiences, while the code-free studio lowered the technical barrier and enhanced creative agency. Our contributions include the data-informed structured resource for pet-inspired affective HRI design, an integrated toolkit that bridges reference materials with hands-on prototyping, and empirical evidence showing how MojiKit empowers users to systematically create richer, more diverse affective robot behaviors.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
affective HRI
animal-inspired robots
design guidance
social robots
human-pet interaction
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
affective HRI
data-informed design
pet-inspired robotics
co-creation toolkit
code-free prototyping
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