[Paper Review] Aesthetics of Robot-Mediated Applied Drama: A Case Study on REMind

Elaheh Sanoubari, Alicia Pan+4 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Mar 25, 2026

Social Robot Interaction and HRI0 citations

TL;DR

This paper presents REMind, a Robot-Mediated Applied Drama case study showing how robot drama’s aesthetics emerge from coordinated design across facilitation, scenography, props, timing, and participant action, not robot expressivity alone.

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.

Motivation & Objective

• Motivate RMAD as a drama-based pedagogical approach for social-emotional learning in education.
• Investigate how performing-arts expertise informs designing emotionally engaging robot-mediated drama.
• Demonstrate how aesthetics of robot drama emerge from coordinated design beyond robot expressivity alone.
• Illustrate iterative, theatre-informed design processes and their impact on learning goals.

Proposed method

• Develop and implement REMind, an anti-bullying robot role-play game using Furhat robots, GUI, immersive cues, and props.
• Employ iterative design with stakeholders (teachers, children, psychologists, audience researchers, theater director) to refine narrative, mechanics, and aesthetics.
• Use a StorySync spreadsheet-based authoring toolkit to synchronize narrative events with robot and multimodal cues.
• Conduct technical rehearsals to tune timing, coordination, and affective subtext with a theater director.
• Analyze the design challenges of conveying emotional subtext with limited robot expressivity and propose affective tuning strategies.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can RMAD sustain an aesthetically engaging dramatic experience given current robot expressive limitations?
• RQ2 What design practices and facilitation roles are necessary to realize effective robot-mediated drama for education?
• RQ3 How do iterative rehearsals with performing arts experts influence the development of RMAD systems?
• RQ4 In RMAD, how is aesthetics distributed across the broader performance ecology beyond robot expressivity?
• RQ5 What strategies best support reflection and bystander intervention learning in robot-mediated scenarios?

Key findings

• Aesthetics in RMAD are distributed across the entire experience, including facilitation, scenography, props, timing, and participant action, not just robot expressivity.
• Technical rehearsals and feedback from performing arts expertise improve robot-mediated interaction and alignment with pedagogical goals.
• A Joker facilitator role and semi-autonomous Wizard–Joker coordination enhance reflective participation without breaking immersion.
• Facial expressions and prosody on current robots are limited; affective legibility is achieved through multimodal cues and scripted adjustments.
• Ambience, props, and interactive design contribute to emotional subtext and engagement, enabling meaningful reflection despite robotic limitations.