Communication of Emotion in Social Robots through Simple Head and Arm Movements

Abstract

Understanding how people perceive robot gestures will aid the design of robots capable of social interaction with humans. We examined the generation and perception of a restricted form of gesture in a robot capable of simple head and arm movement, referring to point-light animation and video experiments in human motion to derive our hypotheses. Four studies were conducted to look at the effects of situational context, gesture complexity, emotional valence and author expertise. In Study 1, four participants created gestures with corresponding emotions based on 12 scenarios provided. The resulting gestures were judged by 12 participants in a second study. Participants' recognition of emotion was better than chance and improved when situational context was provided. Ratings of lifelikeness were found to be related to the number of arm movements (but not head movements) in a gesture. In Study 3, five novices and five puppeteers created gestures conveying Ekman's six basic emotions which were shown to 12 Study 4 participants. Puppetry experience improved identification rates only for the emotions of fear and disgust, possibly because of limitations with the robot's movement. The results demonstrate the communication of emotion by a social robot capable of only simple head and arm movement.

Social Robots: Views of Staff of a Disability Service Organization

“…These results are intriguing given that there is extensive work being done in designing robots that have human-like exteriors and body warmth [71,72], and that can recognize and respond to human emotions [73]. Technological advances are making it increasingly possible to develop robots that possess remarkably human qualities.…”

Interaction of robot with humans by communicating simulated emotional states through expressive movements

“…Robots are widely used today which can express emotions by their motion. The importance of this phenomena is evident from the recent increasing popularity of robots that can express emotions [26][27][28][29][30]. However, all of the robots rely on a specifically designed anthropomorphic face/feature which are intricate in design and expensive to construct.…”

Towards Enriching Robot's Actions with Affective Movements

“…As a consequence, they added specific emotional poses and expressions to their robots. Others have studied how to convey emotions with specific platforms [3,4]. Nevertheless, these research activities have developed modules to show emotions that are strongly integrated with their specific setting, which eliminate the possibility to re-use or adapt their solutions for other projects.…”