Robot Personality

UX, Animation

It Lives!!

Creating the light ring for iRobot’s cleaning robots was an idea and concept I had to add more personality to the products. I was able to combine my two loves, animation and user experience, to create a new and brandable core feature for all of iRobot’s products. I was awarded 2 patents for this work.

Initial Sketches, Demos, Prototypes

Creating the light ring started with research and mapping. I created a fairly involved mind map of all the areas we could explore for robot personality. I even researched how psychologists and scientists study human personality as well as how languages are formed and developed (for future robot communication ideas). As I was developing this work, I linked it with ongoing product development for the next-gen robots (what would ultimately become the s9). I quickly saw an opportunity to revamp how the robot communicates to the customer. I built several prototypes (SW and HW) to pitch to leadership. 

Building an Accurate Light Ring

UX and Development provided me with existing light ring behaviors that had been coded in C#. I worked with a SW developer to create a Python script that could control lights in Cinema 4D (I further modified the script to work for 6 and 8 light setups). Additionally, I converted the light tables from C# to Python and was able to create and test new behaviors inside of C4D that included new colors and light patterns.

I also created textures and materials to simulate how the light would work in the real world based on the CMF for the robot. While not a substitute for real-world prototypes, these digital prototypes allowed the team to make decisions and dismiss some concepts without having to wait for new builds.

Light Ring Behaviors

I also developed and designed a pipeline for After Effects that allowed UX designers to create their own behaviors for developers. Using Excel as as a go-between, I created a spreadsheet that converted the RGB values from AE to LED brightness values. Developers then imported this data directly into their code and so designers could see evaluate the behaviors on real devices.

Tools Used

Cinema 4D  |  After Effects  |  Excel  |  Figma  

Responsibilities

UX | UI  |  Modeling  |  Texturing  |  Lighting  | Animation  |  Scripting  | File Delivery/Pipeline