I have no idea what my Roomba is doing most of the time when it runs. Its vacuuming, I know that, but sometimes it just sits there for a little bit, or slowly swivels back and forth, or does something else that doesnt seem (strictly speaking) vacuuming related.This isnt as much of a problem for Roombas specifically, but for robotics in general, it can be: If robots are badat communicating whats going on with them, itll be harder for people to accept them in our daily lives.

One thing that lets humansinstantly grasp the abstract internal state of other humans is we look at each others faces. Now, as you can imagine,giving robots human faces can lead to other problems. The good news is were also hardwired to perform this intuitive abstract internal state reading trick on some other expressive living things, like dogs: When we look at a dogs tail, we get an indication of whether its happy or not. It turns out that we can do the same for robots, as long as you can give them a tail.

A few years ago, University of Manitoba undergraduate student Ashish Singh and professor James E. Young decided to investigate whether people could accurately interpret the feelings of a Roomba with an actuated, fluffy tail that it could wag like a dog. The Roomba doesnt have feelings, of course, but acting happy could mean that all systems are okay, while sad could communicate a problem andtired could mean a low battery state. In results published in 2013, they found out that it works:

Plus, your floor gets an extra dusting!

The useful component of emotional interfaces is in how easily, and quickly, people can interpret them,Young told us.As social beings, we are very experienced at quickly reading emotional states, which provide us coarse-grained insight into the state of others. And while he said theyinitially considered many alternatives, a dog-like tail seemed to be a nice, clear choiceeven people without dogs or cats may be able to read some tail motions, so we decided to formally investigate that.

Young added that one of the goals of the project was exploring the notion ofperipheral awareness.With a dog tail that projects a robots state, you could be preparing dinner and just see the robot going by from the corner of your eye, he said. That would let you quickly know how the robot is doing, whereas a screen would probably requiretraining to understandand sound would be intrusive.

When they started, the researchers werent sure how readily people would be able to read emotions from a robot with a tail, and it wasnt clear how consistent this would be across a diverse group of people (if at all).Results of the study showed that people have no trouble reliably reading emotional states from a robotic tail. The researchers checked to see whether study participants had pets of their own, and it turned out not to make a difference at all: Whether or not you are (or ever have been) a dog owner, you can still understand what different kinds of tail wagging mean.

The results were so consistent, in fact, that the researchers were able to create a set of design guidelines that formally map out exactly what tail motions youd use to communicate. Want your robot to express disdain? Thats a continuous vertical wag at medium speed. Want it to seemed overwhelmed? Trysome high speed circular wagging.From awed to modest to joyful to astonished, there are specific tail motions that a robot can use to communicate.Any current robot that works with people, including factory transport robots, emerging domestic robots, even collocated utility robots such as the PackBot, could benefit from this,Young said.

After the tailed Roombaproject,Youngs group haslooked at how a tail might work on a humanoid robot, and it has also done more in-depth experiments with different varieties of robot communication, like how drones can alter their motion paths to show that theyre tired or excited. All of this research is available at the labs website linked below, along with guidelines for expression using a tail, just in case youre ready to add one to your robot.

[ A Dog Tail for Robots ] via [ University of Manitoba HCI Lab ]

Special thanks to@grok_ and @Straithe!

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Wagging Tails Help Robots Communicate With Humans - IEEE Spectrum