Recently, an entertainment robot is emerging as a new type of a robot. The purpose of an entertainment robot is to provide intimacy and enjoyment for people rather than to give any function. Therefore, not only emotion design but also personality design is needed for an entertainment robot. When we endow an entertainment robot personality, it gives an entertainment robot the consistency and the distinction of behavior.
The purpose of this study is to suggest a design process for constructing personality of an entertainment robot based on psychological types, and prove the possibility of the process with a case study and an experiment.
In this study, four temperaments which are derived from 16 personality types in psychological type Indicator, MBTI(Myers Briggs Type Indicator), were applied to design personality of an entertainment robot. These temperaments are divided into four types, such as Sensing-Perceiving type, Sensing-Judging type, Intuitive-Thinking type, and Intuitive- Feeling type. Based on the concept that a robot has its own temperament factor, we propose an entertainment robot personality design process, which is composed of four steps. The steps are selecting the concept of an entertainment robot, situation scene design and perception device design, reaction design based on temperaments, and demonstration of robot temperaments about the reaction with an experiment. To see the effectiveness of the suggested process, we also conducted a case study, which followed the design process with an entertainment robot.
Through a case study and an experiment, we could find several results. First, the major experimenters match the reaction with the robot temperament. From this result, we could see that robot temperaments are useful guidelines to design an entertainment robot’s personality. Second, there are situations, which make the reaction express robot temperament better. This means that situation scene design is an important factor to make reaction express robot temperament more distinctly. Third, there are some reactions, which display the robot temperaments better. This helps robot developers notice the reaction, which should be redesigned.
The process suggested in this study will provide a useful guideline for constructing personality of an entertainment robot. This will make it possible for robot developers to construct robot’s personality more easily. As a result, the design of the personality of an entertainment robot will make entertainment robot more intimate and enjoyable.
