This paper introduces Macaron, a huggable robotic device designed to mediate affective human-human remote communication. Design requirements and system overview are described. The evaluation is divided into two parts. The first one investigated the potential and limitations of the hug detection approach by an accuracy test. The second study involves a pilot test to evaluate the proposed interaction rules and experiment setup, based on the participants' perception. The hug detection approach was found to be appropriate for this application and implications of the different types of detection errors are discussed. The results from the user's perception evaluation provided insights related to the factors from each interaction condition that influenced the participants, and possible ways to use this methodology to further investigate the role of Macaron as a mediator of remote communication of affective messages.
展开▼
