Olfactory Puppetry: Merging Olfaction and Puppetry to Explore the Future of Olfactory Social Robots

While olfaction is yet an uncommon sense employed in interactions between humans and social robots, this pictorial questions, “What if robots emit smell?” As olfaction is closely linked to human emotion, it has a high potential to enrich the affective qualities of human-robot interaction (HRI). To explore possible scenarios and usages of olfactory social robots, we employ a novel method, Olfactory Puppetry—puppetry that integrates olfaction, with two approaches. Through our experimental journey, we understand how people envision and what they expect of olfactory robots, as well as fostering discussions on what new interactions could be made possible. We believe such discussions would trigger creative ideas and suggest design directions, serving as a meaningful starting point for designing olfactory HRIs.