Aesthetics of Robot-Mediated Applied Drama: A Case Study on REMind

TL;DR

This paper introduces REMind, a robot-mediated drama game for anti-bullying education, emphasizing how aesthetic engagement in robot drama depends on overall experience design rather than robot expressivity alone.

Contribution

It presents a novel application of robot-mediated applied drama for social-emotional learning and discusses design strategies to enhance emotional engagement despite robotic limitations.

Findings

Aesthetic engagement relies on experience design, not just robot expressivity.

Performing arts expertise enhances robot drama effectiveness.

REMind supports children in rehearsing social interventions.

Abstract

Social robots are increasingly used in education, but most applications cast them as tutors offering explanation-based instruction. We explore an alternative: Robot-Mediated Applied Drama (RMAD), in which robots function as life-like puppets in interactive dramatic experiences designed to support reflection and social-emotional learning. This paper presents REMind, an anti-bullying robot role-play game that helps children rehearse bystander intervention and peer support. We focus on a central design challenge in RMAD: how to make robot drama emotionally and aesthetically engaging despite the limited expressive capacities of current robotic platforms. Through the development of REMind, we show how performing arts expertise informed this process, and argue that the aesthetics of robot drama arise from the coordinated design of the wider experience, not from robot expressivity alone.