https://scholarworks.unist.ac.kr/handle/201301/36 2026-04-08T00:32:32Z 2026-04-08T00:32:32Z Park, Haeun https://scholarworks.unist.ac.kr/handle/201301/88313 2025-11-06T00:58:33Z 2025-07-31T15:00:00Z

Title: Emotion Engine with Dynamic Characteristic Changes for Multimodal Emotion Expression in Social Robots Author(s): Park, Haeun Abstract: This thesis proposes and validates a novel multimodal emotion engine that enables social robots to express emotions dynamically and adaptively through facial expressions, motion, and sound. Traditional emotion expression systems in social robots often rely on rule-based logic and discrete transitions, limiting their ability to reflect the fluid, context-sensitive nature of human emotional expression. To overcome these limitations, the proposed system integrates a continuous affective state model grounded in a Linear Dynamic Affect-Expression Model (LDAEM), allowing robots to respond to stimuli from sensors, temporally sensitive expressions. The engine incorporates multiple sensory inputs---including facial recognition and touch---and transforms them into a dynamic internal emotion vector within a defined affective space. This emotion vector drives multimodal outputs in real time through three channels: (1) facial expression using customizable control points (CPs) that were co-designed by users; (2) motion trajectories derived from user-demonstrated miniature manipulations to reflect expected emotional gestures; and (3) synthesized sound patterns mimicking emotional vocalizations, recorded and processed using Sonic Pi. These multimodal expressions are modulated by dynamic parameters such as damping ratio, which governs expressiveness and liveliness of the output. A series of three structured user studies were conducted to investigate key research questions (RQs). For RQ1, which concerns how the system resolves conflicting emotional stimuli across modalities (e.g., positive touch versus negative facial cues), the findings reveal that users tend to perceive robot emotions as more aligned with negative stimuli. This suggests that priority weighting is applied to negative stimuli in the emotion integration process. For RQ2, the system's dynamic characteristics were modulated using various damping ratios to assess perceived liveliness and naturalness. Results indicate that while increased dynamic expressiveness enhances liveliness, naturalness peaks at moderate dynamic levels across most emotions, with surprise being an exception. Each emotion exhibited distinct optimal dynamic settings, emphasizing the need for emotion-specific modulation strategies. RQ3 explored the smoothness and believability of emotion transitions. A direct transition model (Proposed Model) that connects current emotional CPs to the next emotional state was compared against a state-reset model (Baseline Model), which first returns the robot to a neutral expression before transitioning to a new emotion. Participants overwhelmingly rated the proposed Model as more natural, continuous, and emotionally believable, supporting its effectiveness in real-time interactions involving abrupt emotional shifts. The proposed emotion engine advances the state of the art in social robot design by enabling expressive, context-sensitive, and user-personalized emotion expression. Through multimodal fusion, dynamic control, and user-in-the-loop customization, this research provides a robust framework for designing emotionally responsive robots that can adaptively engage in natural human-robot interaction. Major: Graduate School of Creative Design Engineering

2025-07-31T15:00:00Z Jang, Sangsu https://scholarworks.unist.ac.kr/handle/201301/86400 2025-04-04T04:48:32Z 2025-01-31T15:00:00Z

Title: Design and Evaluation of Digitally Augmented Everyday Objects for Supporting Self-Recording in Daily Environment Author(s): Jang, Sangsu Major: Department of Design

2025-01-31T15:00:00Z Han, Gaeul https://scholarworks.unist.ac.kr/handle/201301/84230 2024-10-14T04:51:00Z 2024-07-31T15:00:00Z

Title: Design-driven innovation through blended meaning: Cases in IKEA hacking Author(s): Han, Gaeul Abstract: From words, and gestures to our everyday products, we are living surrounded by meanings. The significance of meaning extends profoundly into the realm of design, which is a meaning-making activity that communicates and conveys meanings to users through physical artifacts. Interestingly, the significance of meaning extends beyond design to encompass innovation, with Verganti (2003) introducing the concept of design-driven innovation. Through the analysis of successful products from companies such as Sony, Alessi, and Kartell, Verganti identified that radical transformations in design meaning drive substantial changes in user experience and product typology. Consequently, meaning change has emerged as a primary driver of design innovation. Despite their importance and promise, the mechanisms of understanding meaning remain elusive and inexplicable. This often leads to a gap between designers' intended meanings and users' interpretations. From there, my Ph.D. project aims to address this gap in communicating meanings between designers and users by elucidating the meaning construction in design transformation. Interestingly, there is a theory that explains such cognitive operations of understanding new meanings by combining two or more existing concepts from cognitive linguistics, and it is called Conceptual Blending theory (Fauconnier & Turner, 1998). To address the gap, this research adopts conceptual blending as a theoretical framework to understand how we identify and evaluate the meaning in design transformation. This study extends conceptual blending's relevance beyond linguistics, providing a theoretical framework to understand how transformations in design elements convey new meanings. Supported by empirical validation, this research contributes to design practice by exploring the applicability of conceptual blending theory to design transformation, which might link to design-driven innovation. Design transformation is wide-ranging, so my research focuses on IKEA product hacking, which repurposes existing designs into new uses through transformations in form and function. Around the transformative nature, which is commonly shared by product hacking, conceptual blending, and design innovation, IKEA hacking is utilized as a design resource, transformative activity, and design implementation of meaning change in this research. Adopting a Research through Design approach, the study aims to enhance conceptual blending's utility in evaluating and generating design meanings, addressing the semantic gap between designers and users. The exploration is conducted through three studies: 1) Study A (Chapter 4) examines the applicability of conceptual blending theory to assess existing IKEA hacking cases, focusing on meaning change through everyday design transformation. This study derives meaning innovation scoring questions based on CB theory and measures the degree of meaning change, then compares theory-based scores with user semantic evaluations. 2) Study B (Chapter 5) investigates the design transformation process within the context of IKEA hacking in an experimental workshop setting. We observe the design process based on conceptual blending closely to identify moments and factors triggering meaning changes in design. 3) Study C (Chapter 6) focuses on how users identify and evaluate new meanings in design transformation controlled through conceptual blending. I conduct an IKEA hacking design exhibition to gather users' semantic responses on-site, showcasing controlled blending degrees in the designs. These studies collectively offer a comprehensive exploration of meaning change in design transformation through conceptual blending theory. Empirical results suggest conceptual blending's utility in identifying and evaluating meaning transformation within the dynamic landscape of design. Utilizing conceptual blending theory as a theoretical tool for design could offer enhanced understanding and control of meaning construction in design transformation. However, conceptual blending theory is not without limitations when applied to design. Rooted in linguistics, it does not always align with design's multifaceted and dynamic nature. This project identifies three key areas for adaptation: delicate manipulation of blending degree in the design process, consideration of utilitarian functionality and usability in meaning transformation, and consideration of prior experience related to product archetypes and brand products. By identifying these critical areas for design implications, conceptual blending theory can be leveraged to underpin design-driven innovation, elucidating and understanding meaning in design transformation. The blending design approach conducted in this research might also be utilized in design practice fields as a way to communicate abstract meaning with designers and get insights into generating meaning- change designs. By doing so, this thesis tries to mitigate the gap between theoretical findings and empirical validation. Finally, this research advances the field of design-driven innovation in meaning by demonstrating the applicability and limitations of conceptual blending theory in design contexts, offering a refined model for understanding and applying meaning transformation in design. Keywords Conceptual Blending; Design Cognition; Design Transformation; Design-driven Innovation; Meaning Change; Product Design; Product Meaning. Major: Graduate School of Creative Design Engineering

2024-07-31T15:00:00Z Cho, Kwangmin https://scholarworks.unist.ac.kr/handle/201301/82932 2024-10-08T08:26:58Z 2021-01-31T15:00:00Z

Title: Design for Play Experience as Opportunity for the Development of Children Inpatients Author(s): Cho, Kwangmin Major: Graduate School of Creative Design Engineering Department of Creative Design Engineering

2021-01-31T15:00:00Z