Establish Trust and Express Attitude for a Non-Humanoid Robot

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in designing social robots to interact with people to provide therapy and companionship. Most social robots currently being used are light-weight and much smaller in size compared to people. In this work, we investigate designing interactions for larger and more physically capable robots as they have more potential to assist people physically. A modified version of Baxter robot was used, by sitting Baxter on top of an electronic wheelchair. Two experiments were designed for studying the role of facial expressions and body movements in establishing trust with the user and for expressing attitudes. Our results suggest that the robot is capable of expressing fine and distinguishable attitudes (proud vs. relaxed) using its body language, and the coupling between body movements and speech is essential for the robot to be viewed as a person.