Perception of an Android's Intense Emotional Expression Through Face, Body, and Motion

Abstract

As humans, we are capable of expressing emotional states through vocal tones, facial expression, and body movements. However, recent research on human behavior reveals that there is difficulty in interpreting others' emotions purely by facial expressions. Without accompanying body expressions, emotional facial expressions alone can be ambiguous. However, many studies on robots expressing emotions focus solely on facial movements. Thus, this research hopes to cover that gap by investigating the importance of body expression in interpreting emotions during human-robot interaction. We conducted an experiment where participants were asked to interpret the intense emotional expression of a child android robot using just one facial expression, but different body postures. We found that perceived emotion can change depending on different body expressions, even if the facial expression is the same. This result suggests that a humanoid robots' face and body expression should be jointly designed to achieve better communication with humans.