PuppetAI: A Customizable Platform for Designing Tactile-Rich Affective Robot Interaction

2026-02-04

AI Summary

Current social robots exhibit limitations in tactile expressiveness, flexibility of emotional expression, and customizability, hindering diverse research on human–robot affective interaction. This work proposes a modular soft robotic interaction platform featuring a four-layer decoupled software architecture—comprising perception processing, affective modeling, motion scheduling, and low-level actuation—integrated with a cable-driven actuation system and a puppetry-inspired gesture generation framework. The platform enables real-time, voice-driven emotional gesture responses, significantly reducing operational complexity and cost while enhancing tactile expressiveness and behavioral customization. It thus provides a highly dexterous, open, and reproducible experimental platform for affective haptic interaction research, designed to deliver a “pleasurable touch” experience.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic ramifications for generative AI infrastructure and applications
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems

Abstract

We introduce PuppetAI, a modular soft robot interaction platform. This platform offers a scalable cable-driven actuation system and a customizable, puppet-inspired robot gesture framework, supporting a multitude of interaction gesture robot design formats. The platform comprises a four-layer decoupled software architecture that includes perceptual processing, affective modeling, motion scheduling, and low-level actuation. We also implemented an affective expression loop that connects human input to the robot platform by producing real-time emotional gestural responses to human vocal input. For our own designs, we have worked with nuanced gestures enacted by"soft robots"with enhanced dexterity and"pleasant-to-touch"plush exteriors. By reducing operational complexity and production costs while enhancing customizability, our work creates an adaptable and accessible foundation for future tactile-based expressive robot research. Our goal is to provide a platform that allows researchers to independently construct or refine highly specific gestures and movements performed by social robots.

Problem

• tactile interaction
• affective expression
• customizable robot platform
• social robots
• gesture design

Innovation

• modular soft robot
• cable-driven actuation
• affective expression loop
• customizable gesture framework
• tactile-rich interaction