Abstract
Robots are increasingly being employed in human environments. With social interaction often being their primary or secondary function, the interaction between robots and humans are increasingly becoming part of daily life. Hence, the design of these robots must be done in a calculated manner which facilitates the robotic revolution’s main goal of increasing our quality of life. There are established works with regards to design processes and growing research focusing on the influence robot appearance has on user experience and emotions. However, much less has been done to implement these research findings into a design process relevant to robots. The content of this thesis reviews research on design processes and robot appearance in order to present a proposed design process that successfully integrates the considerations required for designing robots in human environments. Real-world case studies applying the proposed design process are also detailed to investigate the applicability and effectiveness of the process. The results suggest that distilling research into classifiable robot design parameters, which are then integrated into a design framework, produces a design process that is applicable and effective for designing robots.