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In recent years, concerns about anxiety and other mental health issues in university students have been widely reported. Some college campuses have seen increased student requests to bring emotional support animals to cam-pus, although these animals are hard to care for in shared living spaces that are common in college settings. This paper reports on a project that seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the role that kawaii (Japanese cuteness) plays in fostering positive human response to, and acceptance of, companion robots for use by college students. In the long term, this may lead to an under-standing of techniques for designing companion robots that assist with student mental health. Specifically, in this paper, we report on a persona-driven and scenario-driven cross-cultural design of two kawaii companion robots and two non-kawaii companion robots. After describing the design process and presenting the companion robot designs, the paper reports on a user study that investigates and compares the desirability of the companion robots based on their level of kawaii. After reading a persona and scenario that provided the context for the design, the study participants viewed videos of the companion robots and answered survey questions regarding the designs. Additionally, participant facial expressions were recorded by iMotions software while the participants viewed videos of the companion robots. 

In modern society, robots have been increasingly involved in human lives in various scenarios. As a future society with human-robot interaction is approaching, it is important to consider how to develop robots that give positive impressions for a variety of users. Based on an Affective Engineering approach, affective values can strengthen the impact of the first impressions of products. Kawaiiness is one affective value that can be a key factor in developing robots with positive impressions. In this research, we carried out a collaborative project to design and develop kawaii robot prototypes in virtual spaces by American and Japanese university students. We then performed an experiment on affective evaluation of those robots using 10 adjectives: kawaii/cute, approachable, scary, trustworthy, cool, beautiful, polite, comfortable, and soft.We previously presented our statistical analysis results for the adjective “kawaii/cute.” However, the results of other adjectives, which potentially have effects on the robot impression, have not been presented yet. Therefore, in this paper, we present our further analysis of several adjectives to clarify their relationship with kawaii/cute and robot features across genders and cultures. In addition, we statistically analyzed the effects of robot pairs, adjectives, genders, and cultures. The results suggest that robots with features such as more animal-like, rounder, and shorter tend to increase positive impressions such as kawaii, approachability, beauty, comfortable, and softness. Also, we found no difference across gender and culture for the impressions on kawaii robots, which shows the possibility of expanding the concept of kawaii robots worldwide. 

We report on a cross-cultural collaborative project between students and faculty at DePauw University in the United States and Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan that used cross-cultural teams to design and evaluate robotic gadgets to gain a deeper understanding of the role that kawaii (Japanese cuteness) plays in fostering positive human response to, and acceptance of, these devices across cultures. Two cross-cultural design teams used Unity and C# to design and implement prototypes of virtual robotic gadgets as well as virtual environments for the robots to interact in. One team designed a virtual train station as well as robotic gadgets to operate in the station. The other team designed a virtual university campus as well as robotic gadgets that operated in that environment. Two versions of each robotic gadget were designed, such that the two versions differed with respect to one kawaii at-tribute (shape, size, etc.) Using these robots, we conducted a formal study that compared perceptions of kawaii robots between American college students and Japanese college students, as well as across genders. The findings revealed that there was not much difference in perception of kawaii across cultures and genders. Furthermore, the study shows that designing a robot to be more kawaii/cute appears to positively influence human preference for being around the robot. This study will inform our long-term goal of designing robots that are appealing across gender and culture.