Enabling clinicians to rapidly animate robots

Robots show potential to help people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A great obstacle in using robots as part of therapy is customizing robot behavior. Clinicians need a low-cost way to rapidly animate robots. There is a tradeoff between quickly creating animations and creating quality animations, but both aspects are important. Based on clinician feedback, we designed and developed two user interfaces for rapidly animating robots: a mouse-based interface and a motion-tracking interface. We examine this tradeoff with a comparative user study for these interfaces. Novices and clinicians were able to successfully create animations with both interfaces with little training. We learned that neither interface alone excels in both quickness and quality, but that a thoughtful combination of both interfaces has potential to yield a good balance between rapid creation and quality.