Interaction Design for a Pet-Like Remote Control
Kazuki Kobayashi1, Yutaro Nakagawa2, Seiji Yamada3,4 ,Shinobu Nakagawa2, and Yasunori Saito5
1

Graduate School of Science and Technology, Shinshu University
4-17-1 Wakasato, Nagano City, 380-8553 Japan
kby@shinshu-u.ac.jp
2
Design Department,Osaka University of Arts469 Higashiyama, Kanan-cho, Minami Kawachi-gun Osaka, 585-8555 Japanshinobu@osaka-geidai.ac.jp, yutarou19870307@yahoo.co.jp
3
National Institute of Informatics
2-1-2 Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda, Tokyo, 101-8430 Japanseiji@nii.ac.jp
4
SOKENDAI
Shonan Village, Hayama, Kanagawa, 240-0193 Japan
5Faculty of Engineering, Shinshu University
4-17-1 Wakasato, Nagano City, 380-8553 Japansaitoh@cs.shinshu-u.ac.jp

Abstract. This paper describes a novel remote control operable withstroking its surface. Advantages of the developed remote control are highfamiliarity and stroke operation. Those enable users to have familiarity
with it and to use it without looking at the ﬁngers. We apply it to aninteraction system with TV. The proposed system has the tolerance for
mistakes in comparison with conventional button-based remote controls
because it enables unfamiliar users to home electric appliances to use it
casually without fear of mistakes and unexpected behavior.
Keywords: remote control agent, pet-like embodied agent, partialexecution.

1Introduction

Various remote controls are used in our home. Home electronics such as televisions, air conditioners, room lights usually have remote controls. They arecurrently commonplace devices. However, many remote controls confuse people
when they use a home electric appliance. Universal remote[1] that aggregatesfunctions of various remote controls is one of technical solutions for this problem. On the other hand, users need to search a button that they want to operate
and to correctly move the ﬁngers to push it. It is not highly problematic foryoung people, but elderly people have a diﬃculty in operating remote controls.
It will be comfortable to use a remote control without looking at their hands.
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Fig. 1. Remote Control Agent: Rebo

Such a remote control is also comfortable to young people familiar to homeelectric appliances.
In this paper, we propose a remote control, Rebo, like a pet animal. Users
stroke its surface with the ﬁngers to control various home electric appliances.
Advantages of Rebo are high familiarity and stroke operation. Its life-like appearance and facial expressions make it familiar with users. They can easily use
it without looking at the ﬁngers by stroking. Therefore, users do not have toseek a button that they want to operate and use it smoothly.
We develop an interaction system with TV as an example of the proposed
remote control. Rebo enables users to easily execute functions of the TV.

2Pet-Like Remote Control AgentFigure 1 shows the developed pet-like remote control agent, Rebo. Rebo is anagent of remote controls of home electric appliances. It has a user-friendly appearance; a smooth surface for stroking and a back side ﬁt for users’ thighs. It is
249 mm long, 146 mm wide, and 96 mm high. A small LCD monitor, full-color
LED modules, and three touch sensors are embedded in the body. The touchsensors are covered with a soft and smooth cloth.
2.1

Familiarity

Rebo has a life-like appearance and facial expressions to acquire familiarity witha user (Fig. 1). We adopt the concept of “intermediate entity between artifacts
and animate beings”. Rebo is not only a tool but also a partner like a pet animal.
The body of Rebo is covered with soft and bouncy cloth and it is pleasant to thetouch. When the user strokes Rebo, it changes its facial expressions to inform him
or her of various emotional states of Rebo. We consider this makes the user more
comfortable with Rebo. Therefore, the user can enjoy interacting with Rebo. We
believe that this concept plays an important role for establishing familiarity
between users and Rebo.

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2.2

Stroke Operation

Rebo has no button and a user strokes its surface to control electric appliances.
In this kind of operation, he or she does not need to move the ﬁngers correctly
and not seek the button that he or she wants. It is more comfortable for the user
to gaze at an appliance than to gaze at the remote control, because the feedback from the appliance is more important than that from the remote control.
However, the operation by stroking is diﬀerent from the operation by pushing abutton in a physical feeling. We then use LED lighting as an acknowledgmentof the operation.
The advantage of the LED lighting has less interference against auditory andvisual information. If an electric appliance such as a TV provides auditory information, it is inadequate that a remote control provides auditory feedback.
In contrast, expressions by simple LED lighting can be grasped by users fromtheir peripheral vision. We call this method “Peripheral feedback”. Peripheral
feedback has less interference against their central visual ﬁeld. This method issimilar to peripheral display[2,3], and its concept is based on our view that “thecentral player is the appliance and the backseat player is the remote control”.

3

TV Remote Agent

We developed a TV remote agent based on the proposed remote control agent
to implement all of the advantages in the previous section. In addition, we also
designed feedback behavior of the TV and constructed an interaction system.
3.1

Stroke Operation

Functions we implemented in the system are channel switch, sound volume change,and power on/oﬀ. The TV screen was implemented on a PC. In this section,
operation methods of Rebo and feedback behavior of the TV are described.
Channel Switch. Figure 2 shows a series of screenshots in which the positionsof two video pictures are changed as a user strokes the surface of Rebo right andleft. When the user widely strokes the surface of Rebo with her ﬁngers, a video
picture goes the outside of the TV frame and another video picture comes into
the frame. When the user strokes Rebo for a short time, a part of another video

Fig. 2. Channel SwitchingInteraction Design for a Pet-Like Remote Control

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Fig. 3. Volume of Sound Changing

Fig. 4. Turn On

picture comes into the frame and then goes out of the frame automatically. In
this implementation, we used recorded TV movies. It will be technically possible
to capture TV movies and show them in the monitor.
Sound Volume Change. When a user strokes Rebo up and down, the volumeindicator (a vertical bar) is shown on the video picture (Fig. 3). The length of
the indicator is changed as the movement distance of the ﬁngers is changed.
Turn On and Oﬀ. A series of screenshots in Fig. 4 shows a video picture
being reduced in an image dimensions. When a user touches Rebo for more than
one second, the image dimensions of the video picture are reduced and ﬁnallydisappeared. If the user stops touching Rebo before the picture is disappeared,
the video picture is enlarged and goes to an ordinary size.
On the other hand, a series of screenshots in Fig. 5 shows a video picture
being enlarged. When the TV has been turned oﬀ, the picture is gradually enlarged while the user touches Rebo. When the user stops touching before thepicture becomes to a maximum size, it is automatically going down and thendisappeared.

Fig. 5. Turn Oﬀ

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Discussions

Since Rebo utilizes a user’s stroke with the ﬁngers, he or she does not need tovisually recognize and understand any icon, signal, and acknowledgment froma remote control. The user can concentrate on the feedback from appliances,
but remote controls. The advantage of our approach partially resembles that of“eyes-free” approach[4,5,6] for many people including visually-impaired persons
and elder people. Particularly for using mobile and wearable computers, input oroutput problems occur due to limited screen space and interaction techniques.
They overcame the problems by developing a 3D audio radial pie menu anda sonically enhanced 2D gesture recognition system on a belt-mounted PDA.
These previous studies attempted just to enrich usability of the user interface
by touch-based devices like touch panels. However, we consider Rebo’s touchbased approach is not only for usability of interface, but also for possibility formanual free appliances. When a user sees animations of the video picture suchas sliding and zooming, she or he can understand the meaning of the feedback
animation from the TV before the function is completely executed. Therefore,
they can immediately notice the function of the appliance by stroking Rebo.
The feature of Rebo in comparison with a button-based remote control isthe tolerance for mistakes. In our proposed system, a user concentrates on thefeedback from a TV because he or she can operate Rebo with strokes withoutlooking at it. The user can cancel the function before it is completely executed
because he or she understands which function is executed by observing the feedback animation from the TV. For example, when the user wants to change thevolume and operates Rebo, he or she tries other ways in stroking by observing
the video picture moving left and right. However, in the button-based remotecontrol, when the user pushes a button, the channel was changed immediately.
The user has to search a button that tunes the previous channel and push it,
and then search a button for changing the volume.
The tolerance for mistakes in Rebo enables unfamiliar users to home electric
appliances to use it casually without a fear of making mistakes and unexpectedbehavior. We have a plan to investigate the eﬀect of this tolerance in an experiment with elderly people.

5Conclusion

In this paper, we propose a pet-like agent as a remote control for home electric
appliances and develop a TV interaction system. Advantages of the proposed
remote control are high familiarity and stroke operation. Life-like appearance andfacial expression makes it familiar with users. We implemented facial expressions
as a life-like behavior and video picture animations as feedback information fromthe TV to enable users to easily notice its functions. LED lighting provided
Peripheral feedback for users to concentrate on the feedback from the appliance,
but the remote control. The feature of Rebo in comparison with a button-based
remote control is the tolerance for mistakes. This enables unfamiliar users toInteraction Design for a Pet-Like Remote Control

139

home electric appliances to use it casually without a fear of making mistakes
and unexpected behavior.
In the next stage of our study, we have a plan to apply Rebo to various homeelectric appliances and enable users to seamlessly control them depending on thecontext.

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