Exploring the Design Space for Hands-Free Robot Dog Interaction via Augmented Reality

With the advancement of robotics-related technologies, there is a growing potential for robot dogs to replace real dogs in helping humans at work, in dangerous situations, or as companions. However, at present, robot dogs are mainly used in the engineering sector, for the companionship of older people and children, and to assist disabled people. However, their interaction is very limited. This prevents many user groups from benefiting from having a robot dog. Advances in Augmented Reality (AR) technology offer more possible methods for controlling robot dogs. This work explores the elements that could be designed for user-robot dog interaction via an AR interface. Furthermore, to consider the situation where users are occupied with another task or unable to use their hands when they are with a robot dog (e.g., jogging or walking with their hands holding items), we focus on hands-free interaction. To accomplish this exploration, we deconstruct the control process and develop a design space for hands-free interaction via AR. This space can help designers identify and use all potential options when designing AR interfaces for effective human-robot dog interaction. We also present a demonstration to illustrate how to use our design space.