Expressing personality of machines

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I was wondering how to express personality in machine animations such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPm7zy-X_fI

In this short sequence you can clearly see that the artist uses sound design, visual effects, color theory and composition to achieve the following feeling / characteristics:

1. Mystery
2. Anomaly
3. Abnormality / unconventionality
4. Uncertainty

I am really interested in the workflow or way of achieving this personality when it comes to machines. But I would like to know how I can express the personality of a given machine, for example a wristwatch or a car though ANIMATION specifically (since I plan on pursuing product visualisation as a source of income in this direction).

How can I express the personality of a machine through animation?

[wooden harness]

TL;DR - Look for existing features on the machine to show personality, or design the machine with personality in mind from the ground up.

Bit late maybe, and I'm no expert, figured I'll share my opinion anyway since discussion is key sometimes.

I want to start by saying that personally, I don't think the clip you provided shows a machine with personality. Everything around the machine itself seems to be there to convey certain feelings like the ones you mentioned above, but the actual machine (the car in this case) doesn't do anything by itself.

I'm aware that's a subjective statement, everyone feels differently about everything. However, building on the previous statement, when I hear "machine with personality" I instantly think of the ones in Star Wars.
If you study R2-D2, BB-8, BD-8 and the various other machines in that franchise that are not voiced, there's plenty to be learned about machines showing personality without words. R2-D2 uses the beeping and certain actions like prodding people, BD-8 acts a bit like a curious puppy, I can't really describe BB-8 but there's something going on there as well.
Likewise in Big Hero 6 you can see Baymax showing personality without words, in iRobot there are certain cases as well.

Granted these are machines with appendages, in some cases facial features, or other features that allow them to show personality. That being said, if you want a machine to show personality somehow then it's also usually designed around that. Herbie is just a classic Beetle but that car inherently has features that they could use for personality. For more modern cars you usually see external sources of emotion in the commercials.

Even Polyfjord's machines seem to be designed to be somewhat bouncy and quirky in the tutorials 😉

Apologies for the long message, just thought I'd share my two cents on the matter, maybe even drop a helpful hint or two in there!

[worthy turret]

Look at how things like humans and animals show personality non-verbally. For instance look at a dog. When it's guilty it'll bow it's head, and look up at you from under it's brows and will tuck it's tail between it's hind legs, with droopy ears. You know the emotion based on it's body language.

You can watch films like wall.e for inspiration

[wooden harness]

Can't believe I forgot about wall-e as an example, another great source of machine personality!