This study investigated the effects of touch characteristics that change the strength and the naturalness of the emotions perceived by people in human-robot touch interaction with an android robot that has a feminine, human-like appearance. Past studies on human-robot touch interaction focused on understanding what kinds of human touches conveyed emotion to robots, i.e., the robot's touch characteristics that can affect people's perceived emotions received less focus. In this study, we concentrated on three touch characteristics (length, type, and part) based on arousal/valence perspectives, and their effects on the perceived strength/naturalness of a commonly used emotion in human-robot interaction, i.e., happiness, and its counterpart emotion, (i.e., sadness), borrowing Ekman's definitions. Our results showed that the touch length and its type are useful to change the perceived strengths and the naturalness of the expressed emotions based on the arousal/valence perspective, although the touch part did not fit such perspective assumptions. Finally, our results suggest that a brief pat and a longer contact by the fingers are better combinations to express happy and sad emotions with our robot. Since we only used a female android, we discussed future works with a male humanoid robot and/or a robot whose appearance is less humanoid.Index Terms-Human-robot interaction, touch interaction. I. INTRODUCTIONT OUCH is an essential factor in emotional communication for human beings in conjunction with facial expressions and language. Various human science literatures have revealed how touch interactions are used between people [1]-[3] and how touch shapes emotions [4]-[6]. The positive and negative effects of touch interactions have also been broadly investigated, for instance, its importance for human well-being [7]-[9]. To understand the relationship between touch and conveyed emotions, Hertenstein et al. conducted a data collection with touch-type and touched-part and different emotions (Ekman's emotions Manuscript
This study addresses the effects of grip timing to express a robot's emotions to people while they are watching a video stimulus together. Past studies on human-robot touch interaction focused on the types of touch behaviors for expressing a robot's emotion, but timing factors have received less attention. In this study, we conducted data collection to investigate the appropriate grip timing to express heartwarming and horror emotions. Participants identified touch (grip) timing and durations by using a robot while they are watching video stimuli. Typically, they preferred a grip timing before a climax for horror videos but after a climax for heartwarming videos. We modeled the timing and durations by a fitting approach to probabilistic distribution to reproduce human-like touch behaviors, and also we implemented the models to an android robot.
Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) coated with Protein-G have been a model system to be used in different antibodies binding study. It is highly desirable to use a substrate-free biosensing system to detect antibodies binding in real-time. In this paper, we developed and applied a MNPs and search-coils integrated detection system, which is not only sensitive to the hydrodynamic volume of MNPs but also sensitive to the environment of MNPs, such as viscosity and temperature of the solution. We demonstrated that the viscosity effect influenced the amplitudes and phases of the 3rd (fH±2fL) and 5th (fH±4fL) harmonics for the mixed frequency testing scheme. The binding between antibodies and Protein-G on MNPs increased hydrodynamic volume of particles, as a result, it also changed the amplitudes and phases of harmonics, which are the object signals we need to analyze. We demonstrated that the viscosity of antibody solution is lower than that of MNP solution, and the antibody binding effect could be shielded by the viscosity effect to certain extent.
This study investigates the effects of the touch characteristics that change the intimacy perceived by humans in human-robot touch interaction with an android robot having a human-like feminine appearance. Past studies on human-robot touch interaction focused on understanding which types of human touches are used to express emotions to robots. However, they less focused on how a robot’s touch characteristics can affect humans’ perceived intimacy. In this study, first, we concentrated on two types of touch characteristics (type and place) and their effects on the perceived intimacy of a commonly used emotion in human-robot interaction, namely happiness. The results showed that the touch types are useful for changing the perceived intimacy, although the touched place did not exhibit any significant effects. Based on the results of our first experiment, we investigated the effects of different touch characteristics (length and part). We concluded that the touch part is useful to change the perceived intimacy, although the touch length did not exhibit any significant effects. Finally, the results suggested that a pat (type) by the fingers (part) is a better combination to express intimacy with our robot.
In this study, we implemented a model with which a robot expressed such complex emotions as heartwarming (e.g., happy and sad) or horror (fear and surprise) by its touches and experimentally investigated the effectiveness of the modeled touch behaviors. Robots that can express emotions through touching behaviors increase their interaction capabilities with humans. Although past studies achieved ways to express emotions through a robot’s touch, such studies focused on expressing such basic emotions as happiness and sadness and downplayed these complex emotions. Such studies only proposed a model that expresses these emotions by touch behaviors without evaluations. Therefore, we conducted the experiment to evaluate the model with participants. In the experiment, they evaluated the perceived emotions and empathies from a robot’s touch while they watched a video stimulus with the robot. Our results showed that the touch timing before the climax received higher evaluations than touch timing after for both the scary and heartwarming videos.
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