Communication using robots: a Perception-action scenario in moderate ASD

Emotional Empathy as a Mechanism of Synchronisation in Child-Robot Interaction

“…The session was run as follows: during the “rest condition,” the heart rate of each child was measured in silence. At the end of that condition, the child was also asked to estimate her/his own emotional feeling on a scale ranging from 1 (the lowest level) to 5 (the highest level) ( Giannopulu and Sagot, 2010 ; Giannopulu, 2011 , 2013 ; 2016a ; 2016b ; Giannopulu and Watanabe, 2014 ; Giannopulu et al, 2016 , 2018 ). Each level corresponded to a specific emotional state depicted by a child’s face as follows: 1st fair, 2nd moderately good, 3rd good, 4th very good, 5th excellent.…”

“…At the end of the session, the child was invited to estimate his/her own emotion on the same above-mentioned scale. More particularly, each child was asked to report his/her own emotional feeling after contact with the robot ( Giannopulu and Watanabe, 2015 ; Giannopulu, 2016a , b , 2018 ; Giannopulu et al, 2016 , 2018 ).…”

“…Developing areas such as the amygdala, posterior insula, and ventromedial pre-frontal cortex share emotional empathy in children aged 6 to 7 years old even if they show changes in functionality over a lifespan ( Decety and Michalska, 2010 ; Steinbeis et al, 2015 ; Tramacere and Ferrari, 2016 ). Subcortical areas (i.e., midbrain areas), develop in association with these other areas ( Fan et al, 2011 ) emphasising the possibility of automatic and unconscious functioning ( Giannopulu and Watanabe, 2015 , 2018 ; Giannopulu et al, 2016 , 2018 ; Giannopulu, 2018 ). Actually, it has been revealed that emotional empathy is directly associated with an autonomic activity mediated by heart rate ( Müller and Lindenberger, 2011 ).…”

“…In the context of an international and interdisciplinary project on human-human and human-robot interaction using a verbal and non-verbal communication between two actors, a speaker and a listener, we investigated emotional empathy in two groups of children: French and Japanese. The speaker was always a neurotypical child, and the listener was a human or a toy robot named “Pekoppa” that reacted to speech sounds by nodding ( Watanabe, 2011 ; Giannopulu, 2016a , b ; Giannopulu et al, 2016 , 2018 ). Based on a mathematical construction, the toy robot automatically generated nodding motion from speech input which promoted the synchronisation with the speaker ( Watanabe, 2011 ).…”

Human-entrained embodied interaction and communication technology for human-connected IoT design

“…They use a material called BioMetal made of a shape memory alloy as their driving force. We can experience the importance and possibility of embodied communication, and the essence of communication (Giannopulu et al, 2016;Giannopulu et al, 2018;Asada, 2015) Fig.9 Speech-driven embodied interaction toys.…”