Music Mode
Transforming Robot Movement into Music Increases Likability and Perceived Intelligence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22190579 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Catie Cuan (0000-0002-7233-2659, Stanford University), Emre Fisher (0009-0001-2211-7387, ASML, San Jose, CA, USA), Allison M Okamura (0000-0002-6912-1666, Stanford University), Tom Engbersen (0009-0001-9536-8638, Skydio, San Mateo, CA, USA) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-23 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-31 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2573-9522 • E-ISSN: 2573-9522 |
| Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1145/3686811 |
| OpenAlex | W4401392379 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 35 |
As robots enter everyday spaces like offices, the sounds they create affect how they are perceived. We present “Music Mode,” a novel mapping between a robot’s joint motions and sounds, programmed by artists and engineers to make the robot generate music as it moves. Two experiments were designed to characterize the effect of this musical augmentation on human users. In the first experiment, a robot performed three tasks while playing three different sound mappings. Results showed that participants observing the robot perceived it as more safe, animate, intelligent, anthropomorphic, and likable when playing the Music Mode Orchestra software. To test whether the results of the first experiment were due to the Music Mode algorithm, rather than music alone, we conducted a second experiment. Here, the robot performed the same three tasks, while a participant observed via video, but the Orchestra music was either linked to its movement or random. Participants rated the robots as more intelligent when the music was linked to the movement. Robots using Music Mode logged approximately 200 hours of operation while navigating, wiping tables, and sorting trash, and bystander comments made during this operating time served as an embedded case study. This article has both designerly contributions and engineering contributions. The contributions are as follows: (1) an interdisciplinary choreographic, musical, and coding design process to develop a real-world robot sound feature, (2) a technical implementation for movement-based sound generation, and (3) two experiments and an embedded case study of robots running this feature during daily work activities that resulted in increased likeability and perceived intelligence of the robot
Aesthetics · Art · Human–computer interaction · Human–robot interaction · Musical · Robot · Visual arts · Computer Science · Psychology · Robotics and Automated Systems · Social Robot Interaction and HRI · Tactile and Sensory Interactions · Artificial Intelligence
Perceptual Evaluation of Blended Sonification of Mechanical Robot Sounds Produced by Emotionally Expressive Gestures
Designing Sound for Social Robots
Revisiting the uncanny valley theory
Using Theatre to Study Interaction with Care Robots
Measurement Instruments for the Anthropomorphism, Animacy, Likeability, Perceived Intelligence, and Perceived Safety of Robots
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |