Social Robot Personality Control Using Fictional Character Profiles
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Solution Overview
Problem
Social robots lack the ability to exhibit interesting and varied personalities, similar to those portrayed by skilled actors and content creators, which limits their emotional resonance and interaction effectiveness with humans.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus that map personality traits from characters in movie, TV, literary, or game products onto social robots using personality profiling functions, allowing the robots to behave consistently with the profiled character by controlling their responses to environmental stimuli based on quantitative personality trait values.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If social robots use standardized programming for personality, then manufacturing and control become easier, but the personalities become predictable and less interesting
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-processes character data from movies, TV shows, and literature during an offline phase, extracting personality traits and mapping them to robot behaviors before deployment. This preliminary action allows the robot to exhibit diverse, interesting personalities without requiring complex real-time processing, resolving the contradiction between ease of manufacture and personality variety.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent copies personality profiles from existing fictional characters whose personalities have already been developed by skilled writers and actors. By copying these pre-established character personalities rather than generating them de novo, the system achieves interesting and varied personalities while maintaining relatively simple robot programming.
2Adaptability or versatility
If social robots exhibit more varied personalities, then emotional resonance with humans improves, but control complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary layer consisting of pre-processed character data and personality profiles that mediate between the simple robot control system and the need for varied personalities. This intermediary layer contains the complexity of character development while keeping the robot's real-time control relatively simple.
Solution Approach 2:
Complex personality analysis and trait extraction are performed in advance during an offline preprocessing phase, rather than during real-time robot operation. This preliminary action transfers computational complexity from the robot controller to an external preprocessing system, allowing the robot to exhibit varied personalities without requiring complex onboard processing.
3Adaptability or versatility
If personality profiles are derived from fictional characters, then personality variety and interest improve, but systematic application of entertainment industry expertise is not currently known
Solution Approach 1:
The system copies personality profiles from fictional characters in movies, TV shows, and literature, leveraging the entertainment industry's expertise in character development. This copying approach allows systematic application of established character personalities without requiring the robot system to independently generate complex personality structures.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses an intermediary data structure that stores personality profiles extracted from fictional characters. This intermediary layer bridges the gap between entertainment industry character development and robot control, allowing systematic application of character expertise while maintaining manageable system complexity through structured data representation.
Data Source
Figure 1A
Figure 1B~1C
Figure 2~3
AI summary
A method and apparatus for controlling a social robot includes providing a set of quantitative personality trait values, also called a "personality profile" to a decision engine of the social robot. The personality profile is derived from a character portrayal in a fictional work, dramatic performance, or by a real-life person (any one of these sometime referred to herein as a "source character"). The decision engine controls social responses of the social robot to environmental stimuli, based in part on the set of personality trait values. The social robot thereby behaves in a manner consistent with the personality profile for the profiled source character.