Taotie: Designing a Museum Robot utilizing Cultural Metaphors

Robots have increasingly been integrated into the museum environment, demonstrating potential for use in guided tours, interpretation, and interactive education. For historical and cultural museums, studies have shown that robots incorporating cultural elements have better results for the transfer of cultural knowledge. However, existing approaches to robot customization have difficulty reflecting complex cultural features. This paper explores a museum robot design approach that incorporates cultural metaphors and conducts a practical exploration of museum robot customization design for the unique cultural element of traditional Chinese bronze. Taotie is a museum robot that uses ancient bronze as a cultural metaphor and can present 27 different bronze pattern faces through a combination of rotating mechanisms. We exhibited Taotie in the museum and interviewed the visitors. The user study indicates that users can distinctly perceive the cultural metaphor behind the robot, and they show a high level of affection for it. This work can provide a reference for the design approach and technical path for customizing museum robots with specific cultural metaphors.