Inferring Affective States by Involving Simple Robot Movements

Humans estimate the emotions of others based on voices, expressions, and gestures, even though such expressions are comprised of many complicated elements. If a simple existence moves, how we estimate its emotional states remains relatively unclear. This paper investigates how humans suppose emotional states by the parameter changes of simple movements. We use a simple disk-shaped robot that only moves on the floor and expresses its emotional states by movements and movement parameters based on Russell's circumplex model. We observed the physical interaction between humans and our robot through an experiment where our participants were seeking a treasure in a given field and confirmed that humans infer emotional states by movements that can be changed by simple parameters. This result will contribute to the basic design of HRI.