Tinkered soft robots offer significant potential in socially assistive applications, yet their control presents a major barrier for non-expert operators like therapists and educators. Conventional methods often have high cognitive load, are non-expressive, or require complex kinematic models that are impractical for customized, handcrafted robots. To address this, we introduce PoseInterp Control, a novel, kinematics-free teleoperation approach for tinkered soft robots. This approach allows operators to create a custom control interface by defining a few key robot poses and then fluidly interpolating between them in real-time by moving a single point on a digital canvas. We conducted a within-subject user study (N=6) comparing a 2D implementation of our method against conventional Direct Actuator Control in a representative greeting task. Our preliminary findings suggest a clear trade-off: while PoseInterp Control required more initial setup time (18.3 vs. 5.8 min), it enabled operators to perform the interactive task more than twice as fast (13.0 vs. 26.5 s). Participants also rated it as significantly more intuitive, less fatiguing, and more enjoyable. PoseInterp Control effectively shifts cognitive load from real-time operation to a prior setup phase, making it a promising and practical solution for non-experts. It lowers the barrier to creating expressive, interactive behaviors with tinkered soft robots, expanding their potential in socially assistive applications.
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