Invisible Strings: Deriving Puppetry Principles and their Hidden Connections to Robot Behavior Design

2026-07-03

AI Summary

Existing design principles from animation, theater, and related art forms struggle to accommodate the physical constraints and real-time interactivity required for nonverbal behaviors in embodied robots. This work addresses this gap by systematically mining textual sources and practitioner knowledge from traditional puppetry, integrating literature analysis with expert interviews to distill high-level design principles centered on embodiment, form, and interaction. The resulting puppetry-inspired framework not only extends and transcends current artistic paradigms but also establishes a tailored methodology for designing nonverbal behaviors specifically for embodied interactive robots. In doing so, it significantly broadens the scope of arts-informed heuristics in human-robot interaction research.

Abstract

When designing robots' nonverbal behaviors, many researchers have turned to arts-based insights, such as Disney's Animation Principles. Yet, while these principles bear key insights into the design of like-life characters, their application to robot design is inherently limited, in part because animation is not constrained by real-world physics, and in part because animation principles focus on low level animation mechanics and not high-level design considerations for physically embodied, interactive characters. In contrast, little attention has been paid to art forms like puppetry, despite their long history of exploring morphological, behavior, and interaction design of physically embodied, interactive characters. As such, in this work we leverage puppetry texts and practicing puppeteers' expert knowledge knowledge to derive a set of puppetry principles with key insights for robot design. As we show, these insights go beyond -- and uniquely complement -- the prior insights provided by theater, dance, and animation.

Problem

• robot behavior design
• puppetry principles
• nonverbal behavior
• physically embodied interaction
• animation principles

Innovation

• puppetry principles
• robot behavior design
• embodied interaction
• nonverbal communication
• human-robot interaction