ELEGNT: Expressive and Functional Movement Design for Non-Anthropomorphic Robot - Apple Machine Learning Research

Nonverbal behaviors such as posture, gestures, and gaze are essential for conveying internal states, both consciously and unconsciously, in human interaction. For robots to interact more naturally with humans, robot movement design should likewise integrate expressive qualities—such as intention, attention, and emotions—alongside traditional functional considerations like task fulfillment, spatial constraints, and time efficiency. In this paper, we present the design and prototyping of a lamp-like robot that explores the interplay between functional and expressive objectives in movement design. Using a research-through-design methodology, we document the hardware design process, define expressive movement primitives, and outline a set of interaction scenario storyboards. We propose a framework that incorporates both functional and expressive utilities during movement generation, and implement the robot behavior sequences in different function- and social- oriented tasks. Through a user

ELEGNT: Expressive and Functional Movement Design for Non-Anthropomorphic Robot - Apple Machine Learning Research research area Human-Computer Interaction content type paper published January 2025 ELEGNT: Expressive and Functional Movement Design for Non-Anthropomorphic Robot Authors Yuhan Hu, Peide Huang, Mouli Sivapurapu, Jian Zhang View publication Copy Bibtex Nonverbal behaviors such as posture, gestures, and gaze are essential for conveying internal states, both consciously and unconsciously, in human interaction. For robots to interact more naturally with humans, robot movement design sh

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