hello everyone thanks for having us my
name is Frederick Robinson and I'll be
presenting our work on spatially
distributed robot sound
spatial sound is used in films
interactive media and many other audio
related domains to immerse guide and
affect the listener however it has so
far received little attention in the
field of human robot interaction
we believe that should change we are
seeing more and more electronic audio
capable devices in our homes be
connected and this connectivity can be
used to create spatial sound
environments this figure here is taken
from a recent patent by LG for example
as a result we can expect that at some
point we will have spatial audio in a
large number of homes so we wondered how
might human robot interaction benefit
from this technological affordance
specifically we asked how does a robot
with the ability to selectively emit
sound across its body and the
surrounding environment affect a human's
Impressions and behavior
to tackle this question we pursued a
research through design approach
creating two rich and comprehensive
robot sound designs having participants
experience these designs and then
learning about their Impressions through
semi-structured interviews
the robot that we designed for was
diamandini a 1.5 meter tall robotic
artwork that was created in 2013 By the
third author Mari villanaki and we
deployed this robot in the National
facility for human robot interaction
research
we had loudspeakers integrated into the
robot and distributed across the space
meaning that the robot sound could be
emitted either from its body or across
the environment or both
the audio system making this possible
consisted of a wireless local audio
server inside the robot which would
address speakers enclosed inside and an
audio server for the room system which
addressed speakers across the space
soundscapes and audio events would then
be remotely triggered through a tablet
interface
we created two designs one we call
marble and the other one we call Cloud
both of which were derived from previous
work we had done
the marble design was emitted
exclusively from the robot its
underlying metaphor was that of
inanimate stone sculpture and all sound
it emitted was derived from a common
source material which was Stone
the cloud design was emitted from the
robot and across the environment its
underlying metaphor was that of a
bodyless digital entity which can move
freely across the environment or be
embodied within a physical robot
structure
its sound material was oriented towards
conventions of user interaction sound
which is common in various types of
mobile and smart devices
in other words the robot had a mind and
a body and the mind could inhabit the
body but it could also be distributed
across the entire space or float to a
specific location that may be relevant
to the interaction
a helpful example is to imagine that you
want to interact with your robot
upstairs but the physical robot cannot
get upstairs so instead the embodied
robot turns into a disembodied virtual
agent that can go wherever there are
loudspeakers
here is a video clip that showcases the
two sound designs
let's get
it
these designs we then showed to
participants giving them around 10
minutes to interact with each before we
would move on to the interviews
five themes emerge from our
conversations regarding the effect of
spatial robot sound on participant
attention and behavior the experiential
qualities of the immersive audio
experience the effect of spatial sound
on perceived robot animacy and agency
the characteristics conveyed by the
sound content and participant
Impressions on musical presence and
movement sound
I will expand on the first three themes
in particular
attention and behavior most participants
reported that sound elements in the
environment directed their attention
away from the robot while local sound
plays the robot at the center of
attention
referring to the spatial Cloud Design
One participant said it very much took
my attention away from the robot I was
more focused on the sound itself and on
figuring out where it was coming from
using sound to draw attention to and
away from the robot had implications for
how and whether participants interacted
with it at all essentially muting the
robot made participants perceive it more
as a peripheral bystander than a social
agent to interact with
speaking of the spatial design one
participant said I don't have to engage
with her if I don't want to
experiential qualities participants made
various comments which did not focus on
the robot or their interaction with it
but more generally referred to the
experience of being enveloped by sound
regardless of whether they considered
the existence of spatial sound useful
necessary or appropriate they found it
interesting engaging and novel one
participant said I really enjoyed that
experience it was a really cool
interaction because it's something that
was new it was moving through the space
that's something I don't really
experience very often
another one said it was more poetic and
dramatic in a way it all sort of flowed
nicely I was quite happy to just
experience that and maybe my interaction
did something maybe it did not but it
did not bother me
Intimacy in agency
participants attributed different
degrees of animacy in agency to the
robot based on whether it locally
emitted sound or not specifically they
described a robot that emitted sound
locally as more animate and More in
control
one participant said when the sound is
kept to diamandini embodied within her
in a way she becomes a bit more alive
another one said when no sound is coming
out of the robot you don't see that
agency or these human attributes you see
that it's part of another system the
robot is just another accessory of the
system
participants opinions on what they
preferred were quite diverse some wanted
a more animate self-contained robot
While others did not one participant
perceived the marble design as very
disquieting and considered it much more
natural to think of the robot as being
externally controlled rather than
something that is alert on its own
when considering these findings
some limitations should be noted first
we did not present participants with a
specific use case so while our findings
demonstrate the potential of spatial
sound further work is needed to identify
the applications where it is appropriate
or where it is not
second our designs did not contain
speech so it's an open question whether
the addition of speech content changes
how much non-verbal robot sound can
affect attention it could be that once a
robot begins to emit speech other
nonverbal sound is classified much
closer to background noise which could
then reduce its impact
to summarize we found that the spatial
distribution of robot sound had several
notable and intriguing effects including
how much attention participants paid to
the physical robot compared to the
environment whether they considered the
robot's intentions and actions as
something irrelevant that could safely
be ignored
whether they considered the robot as a
self-contained agent with its own
decision-making process or as an
accessory to a broader ambient
intelligence
and how novel and engaging they
considered the experience as a whole
for designers this suggests that the
spatial distribution of robot sound may
be a powerful new tool to engage users
and to dynamically and implicitly direct
their attention and expectations during
HRI scenarios
and this brings me to the end of the
presentation thank you very much for
your attention