Social Robot Design Platform

Initiator & sole developer · Feb. 2025 – present · now in beta

The Social Robot Design Platform distills the workflow behind the social robots I built for the lab into a design language, and implements it as a web-based end-user programming tool so that researchers can build robot behavior without writing code.

• Translated social robotics system development workflows into a Social Robot Design Language, inspired by my experience of developing 5 social robotic systems.
• Implemented the design language as a web-based end-user programming tool.
• Collaborated with four groups of student researchers in a research-through-design process over 6 months.
• Deployed the system in a laboratory experiment for over a month.

The systems behind it

The design language grew out of systems I developed and deployed with real users:

• XiaoXiao, a companion robot for older adults (front-end development)
• Zbot, a diary robot for older adults built for my bachelor’s thesis, reusing XiaoXiao’s front end with a new back end
• Museum guide robots — for the centennial exhibition at the Iso Eikichi Cottage, where visitors talked with the robot after their tour (Lin et al., 2025), and for the opening of the NTU College of Engineering museum
• An opening-ceremony host robot at the National Taiwan Library
• A human library robot, built from an idea proposed by one of the student research groups
• ECRobot, a robot tutor

This development work also became the basis of the lab’s Social Robotics Training Program.