MASK

Abstract

This paper presents the design and development of an innovative interactive robotic system to enhance audi- ence engagement using character-like personas. Built upon the foundations of persona-driven dialog agents, this work extends the agent’s application to the physical realm, employing robots to provide a more immersive and interactive experience. The proposed system, named the Masquerading Animated Social Kinematics (MASK), leverages an anthropomorphic robot which interacts with guests using non-verbal interactions, in- cluding facial expressions and gestures. A behaviour generation system based upon a finite-state machine structure effectively conditions robotic behaviour to convey distinct personas The MASK framework integrates a perception engine, a behaviour selection engine, and a comprehensive behaviour library to enable real-time, dynamic interactions with minimal human intervention in behaviour design. Throughout the user subject studies, we examined whether the users could recognize the intended character in both personality- and film-character- based persona conditions. We conclude by discussing the role of personas in interactive agents and the factors to consider for creating an engaging user experience.

Personality based Persona Demonstrations

Choose Persona

Extroverted and Cooperative

Character based Persona Demonstrations

Choose Persona

Minion

User Subject Studies Results

Hypohesis

We hypothesize that by embedding a character template into robotic behavior, interactive agents can convincingly embody distinct personas for users to engage with. In par- ticular, we aim to achieve this through a simple finite-state machine framework, which determines robotic actions from an observed user’s behavior, a current robot’s behavior, and a persona

Number of Participants in Phase 1

Number of Participants	Extroverted Persona	Introverted Persona	Sum
Agreeable Persona	Extroverted and Cooperative (13)	Introverted and Cooperative (13)	26
Disagreeable Persona	Extroverted and Uncooperative (13)	Introverted and Uncooperative (13)	26
Sum	26	26	52

Number of Participants in Phase 2

Minions	Cowardly Lion	Scrooge	Spock	Total
27	27	27	27	108

Survey Phase 1 - Personality Based Persona (52 Participants)

During the first phase of the survey, the participants were exposed to personality-based persona robots. (between-subject studies)
The users were asked to score the extroversion (E-score) and agreeableness (A-score) of the robot.
We conducted a two-way repeated-measures MANOVA on the results obtained from user survey questions S1 and S2 with α = 0.05.
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We observed that the users could recognize both extroversion and the agreeableness of the robot.
There was a significiant difference is measured E-score between interacted persona (extroverted - introverted).
In addition, there was a significiant difference is measured A-score between interacted persona (agreeable - disagreeable).

Survey Phase 2 - Film Character Based Persona (108 Participants)

During the first phase of the survey, the participants were exposed to character-based persona robots. (between-subject studies)
The users were asked to choose one of the six choices of the character and rate the matching score.
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The classification accuracy was reported as 76.7%, the users were able to identify and classify the intended mimicing character. We observed that the users could successfully identify the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of OZ, Minions, and Scrooge characters. However, participants appeared to misclassify the character of Spock, especially between Spock (0.44) and Scrooge (0.39).

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User Subject Studies Protocols or Additional Results

Persona Infuser

In the quest to embed robots with distinct personas, we introduce a persona infuser that constructs a behavior database. This database, acts as a blueprint for persona-driven behavior, encoding all possible combinations of states, observations, and transitions by large language models.