Cleaning with a Character: Prompting as a Design Material for Domestic Robotics
Asif Shaikh, Aygün Varol, S M Musfequr Rahman and Johanna Virkki · RO-MAN 2026, IEEE
Letting people give a vacuum robot a personality by typing a prompt is popular, but the same freedom produced rude language and unsafe suggestions, so the paper proposes a layered safety design.
Abstract
We introduce prompting as a design material for domestic robotics, enabling users to shape a robot's character through natural language rather than fixed, developer-defined scripts. This reframing challenges the assumption that robot character is a static design-time decision by positioning it as a user-configurable interaction layer. We demonstrate this concept through a physical prototype, a vacuum robot integrating a large language model (LLM) and a vision-language model (VLM), that supports prompt-based character customization and context-aware interaction. In an exploratory video-based study (N = 27), participants expressed diverse preferences, ranging from silent appliance-like behaviour to expressive and humorous styles, while also revealing critical risks such as socially inappropriate language and unsafe action suggestions. We discuss design implications for balancing personalization with predictability and propose a layered safety framework. Our findings highlight prompting as a powerful yet volatile design material for embodied systems, offering opportunities for personalization alongside urgent safety and ethical challenges.