Designing a Co-Creative Dancing Robotic Tablet

This paper reports the design and evaluation following user-centered methods of a dancing robotic tablet prototype for co-creative human-robot interaction. An initial exploratory interview study served to obtain requirements for the design and implementation of a first prototype. This prototype was evaluated in a user study and subsequently improved. Two types of autonomous robot behavior were considered as creativity support and evaluated in a second user study. While imitation behavior was perceived as more intelligent; the generation behavior that attempted to challenge users and be different to the users’ input led to a greater variety of gestures. Video recording analysis shows the potential of such autonomous behavior for the creative process, as users were inspired to some extent by the robot’s input.