Investigation of Robot Expression Style in Human-Robot Interaction

In our daily conversation, we obtain considerable information from our interlocutor’s non-verbal behaviors, such as gaze and gestures. Several studies have shown that nonverbal messages are prominent factors in smoothing the process of human-robot interaction. Our previous studies have shown that not only a robot’s appearance but also its gestures, tone, and other nonverbal factors influence a person’s impression of it. The paper presented an analysis of the impressions made when human motions are implemented on a humanoid robot, and experiments were conducted to evaluate impressions made by robot expressions to analyze the sensations. The results showed the relation between robot expression patterns and human preferences. To further investigate biofeedback elicited by different robot styles of expression, a scenario-based experiment was done. The results revealed that people’s emotions can definitely be affected by robot behavior, and the robot’s way of expressing itself is what most influences whether or not it is perceived as friendly. The results show that it is potentially useful to combine our concept into a robot system to meet individual needs.