Project EMAR

October 21, 2020

Exploring creepiness in social robots

emar

Project EMAR persevered this past quarantined summer, continuing the mission of building a social community-based robot for adolescents. In one of three projects, EMAR studied how teens may perceive a robot as creepy.

“This theory is about how we want robots to be human-like, but if they become too human, we don’t like them at all.”

Through remote online sessions, EMAR researchers worked with teens to define and conceptualize creepiness and explore its manifestations in technology. Teens articulated and illustrated storyboards to explore interactions between robots and teens that would be creepy and unfavorable, informing researchers on future design choices of EMAR.

Are there existing technologies or robots that creep you out? Can you identify why?

Digital storyboard of a social robot talking with a potential teen. Questions start normal about how the teen is feeling and who the teen works with, but then the robot starts asking about where they live and what the teen is wearing.

An example storyboard from the study where teens describe and illustrate a scenario that would be perceived as creepy.