The robotic service objects. Design approach for the multidimensional evaluation of robotic aesthetics

With the growing popularity of service/social robots in different contexts and for many users, it becomes one of the future challenges for research to achieve a higher level of acceptability through the characterisation of the interaction with the machine, both from an expressive and functional point of view. A characterisation will depend on the type of user, work context and tasks to be performed by the machine. In this scenario, telepresence robots require an in-depth characterisation study, as they are machines intended to represent the extension, and therefore the personality, of remote subjects, mediating their communication. Through an analysis of case studies, this paper aims to provide an overview of approaches to telepresence robotics’s physical and/or cognitive characterisation. The use and application contexts dynamics will be explored to build support for experimentation.