MuFaSAA Dataset

Metaphors to Understand Functional and Social Anticipated Affordances.

This dataset contains a collection of 165 robots. For each robot we collected descriptions of the robot, design metaphors, social expectations, and functional expectations. Download the dataset using the download button on the left side of this page.

Robot Descriptors

Image of a soft knitted rabbit-shaped robot.
A composite image of the robot from a front and side view
Image describing the features that a robot has
A set of 52 design features:
43 binary features, 4 ordinal features, and 5 continuous features

The robot descriptors were collected by a group of researchers. The researchers hand-labeled each design feature, which corresponds to physical elements present on the robot.

Design Metaphors

Text saying: like a dog, like a rabbit, like a tricycle.
Three user-reported design metaphors to describe each robot
A set of progress bars showing how abstract each of these metahpors are.
The levels of abstraction for each metaphor

Design metaphors are people, animals, things, or concepts that participants are reminded of when viewing the design of the robot. The level of abstraction corresponds to how literal or abstractly this idea implemented in the robot’s design.

Social Expectations

A set of logos: a smiley face, a brain, and a uncertain face, reading warmth, competence, discomfort from left to right.
The RoSAS Scale
an image of two axes, saying femininity and masculinity.
Masculinity and Femininity
A ticker moving between low social role and high social role
Social Role
A logo of two people hugging eachother.
Identity Closeness
A thumbs up.
Likeability

Social expectations describe the robot’s identity and ability for social interaction, as determined by the robot’s embodiment. These attributes encapsulate how a participant relates to and interacts with the robot.

Functional Expectations

three logos of an eye, a hand touching something, and a hand waving.
EmCorp Scale
a blob with a question mark in it.
Design Ambiguity
A dog with two feathers growing out of its head.
Design Atypicality

Functional Expectations describe what the robot is physically expected to do. Participants also evaluated how well-aligned the robots design is with the tasks they expected it to perform.