Title: Exploring home robot capabilities by medium fidelity prototyping,
Abstract: In order for autonomous robots to be able to support people's well-being in
homes and everyday environments, new interactive capabilities will be required,
as exemplified by the soft design used for Disney's recent robot character
Baymax in popular fiction. Home robots will be required to be easy to interact
with and intelligent--adaptive, fun, unobtrusive and involving little effort to
power and maintain--and capable of carrying out useful tasks both on an
everyday level and during emergencies. The current article adopts an
exploratory medium fidelity prototyping approach for testing some new robotic
capabilities in regard to recognizing people's activities and intentions and
behaving in a way which is transparent to people. Results are discussed with
the aim of informing next designs.