University of Glasgow study: AR testing informs animal-like and anime-style design for social robots

A University of Glasgow team used AR to overlay and test 5 prototype faces (animal, robot, emoji, anime, and eyes-only) and 5 sounds (cat meow, human-like voice, electronic tone, music, and "animalese") on the social robot Qoobo, with 24 volunteers ranking the combinations. Results showed that animal and anime faces paired with animal sounds were most liked, and that faces conveyed emotion better than sound. The study is based on their AZRA system and could inform the design of future zoomorphic social robots and user-customizable appearances.