Design and usability evaluation of the EvaSIM simulator for a socially assistive robot

The use of software simulators has a long tradition in robotics, allowing the rapid prototyping of behaviors thus saving time and cost. In recent years there has been an increased interest in the development of social robots and Socially Assistive Robots (SARs), for which interaction design, rather than movement and control issues are more important. This work describes the design, development and evaluation of a simulator software for the EVA robot, named EvaSIM. The EVA (Embodied Voice Assistant) robot is an open-source robotics platform created to support research in human-robot interaction. The EvaSIM simulator can interpret the codes of the scripts generated with the EVA visual programming language (VPL) as well as the codes generated with the EvaML language, an XML-based language for developing interactive sessions for the EVA robot. The simulator includes a Parser and an Execution module and GUI to enact the designed interactions. EvaSIM is capable of simulating the robot’s multimodal interaction capabilities, emphasizing its social affordances. The simulator was evaluated in relation to its perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, clarity and usability by 26 users. The SUS instrument was used to assess usability. Results indicate that the EvaSIM simulator is perceived by users as effective, useful and easy to use. Results were consistent among experienced and beginner users.