Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: We present SRWToolkit, an open-source Wizard of Oz toolkit designed to facilitate the rapid prototyping of social robotic avatars powered by local large language models (LLMs). Our web-based toolkit enables multimodal interaction through text input, button-activated speech, and wake-word command. The toolkit offers real-time configuration of avatar appearance, behavior, language, and voice via an intuitive control panel. In contrast to prior works that rely on cloud-based LLM services, SRWToolkit emphasizes modularity and ensures on-device functionality through local LLM inference. In our small-scale user study ($n=11$), participants created and interacted with diverse robotic roles (hospital receptionist, mathematics teacher, and driving assistant), which demonstrated positive outcomes in the toolkit's usability, trust, and user experience. The toolkit enables rapid and efficient development of robot characters customized to researchers' needs, supporting scalable research in human-robot interaction.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Nilgar, Atikkhan Faridkhan, Van Laerhoven, Kristof, Kinoti, Ayub
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7080182318
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