Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in design-ing social robots to interact with people to provide therapy andcompanionship. Most social robots currently being used arelight-weight and much smaller in size compared to people. Inthis work, we investigate designing interactions for larger andmore physically capable robots as they have more potential toassist people physically. A modified version of Baxter robotwas used, by sitting Baxter on top of an electronic wheelchair.Two experiments were designed for studying the role of facialexpressions and body movements in establishing trust with theuser and for expressing attitudes. Our results suggest that therobot is capable of expressing fine and distinguishable attitudes(proud vs. relaxed) using its body language, and the couplingbetween body movements and speech is essential for the robotto be viewed as a person.