arXiv subjects

Franziska Babel

Publications and source records attributed to Franziska Babel.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Why did My Robot Just Change Personality? Prompting Guidelines for a Grounded Robot Persona in LLM-Based HRI

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for verbal interaction in social robots, yet prompt design in human-robot interaction (HRI) remains underspecified. As a result, robots may present hallucinated capabilities, unclear behavioural boundaries, and misleading personas. This paper develops a framework for prompt design in LLM-based robots and introduces a structured prompt template comprising eight functional components through which robot behaviour can be specified, bounded, and adapted. The framework is grounded in a review of prior LLM-based HRI work and complemented by survey and discussion data from HRI experts gathered at the Robo-Identity workshop at IEEE RO-MAN 2025 (N=27). The qualitative findings highlight limited legibility of robot personality, the need for user adaptation, and strong ethical concerns about safety, deception, and governance. Based on these findings, we present prompting guidelines accompanied by proof-of-concept template as a structured design and reporting aid for HRI research. We argue that prompt design should be treated as a socio-technical problem rather than a minor implementation detail, requiring explicit capability boundaries, transparent behavioural assumptions, and context-sensitive safeguards to support reliable and interpretable HRI.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

Towards A Framework for Levels of Anthropomorphic Deception in Robots and AI

This paper presents a preliminary draft of a framework around the use of anthropomorphic deception, defined here as misleading users towards humanlike affordances in the design of autonomous systems. The goal is to promote reflection among HCI and HRI researchers, as well as industry practitioners, to think about levels of anthropomorphic design that are: a) functionally necessary, b) socially appropriate, and c) ethically permissible for their use case. By reviewing the relevant literature on deception in HCI and HRI, we propose a framework with four levels of anthropomorphic deception. These levels are defined and distinguished by three factors: humanlikeness, agency, and selfhood. Example use cases at each level illustrate considerations around their functional, social, and ethical permissibility. We then present how this framework is applicable to previous work on persuasive robots We hope to promote a balanced view on anthropomorphic deception by design that should be neither na\"ive (e.g., as a default) nor exploitive (e.g., for economic benefit).

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

A Checklist for Deploying Robots in Public: Articulating Tacit Knowledge in the HRI Community

Many of the challenges encountered in in-the-wild public deployments of robots remain undocumented despite sharing many common pitfalls. This creates a high barrier of entry and results in repetition of avoidable mistakes. To articulate the tacit knowledge in the HRI community, this paper presents a guideline in the form of a checklist to support researchers in preparing for robot deployments in public. Drawing on their own experience with public robot deployments, the research team collected essential topics to consider in public HRI research. These topics are represented as modular flip cards in a hierarchical table, structured into deployment phases and important domains. We interviewed six interdisciplinary researchers with expertise in public HRI and show how including community input refines the checklist. We further show the checklist in action in context of real public studies. Finally, we contribute the checklist as an open-source, customizable community resource that both collects joint expertise for continual evolution and is usable as a list, set of cards, and an interactive web tool.

cs.RO↗