The Effect of Interaction Modality for Facial-constrained Robots in Domestic Environment

Abstract

The objectives of these studies were to examine the effect of non-verbal cues of a Future Robotic Computer (FRC) on people’s impressions of the robots (Study 1) and on people’s perceptions of the robots’ emotions (Study 2). In Study 1, participants watched nine stimuli drawn from robots in three working conditions (not working, working using one eye module, working using two eye modules) and in three gazing conditions (not gazing at the participant, gazing at participant with one eye module, gazing at participant with two eye modules), and then their impressions of the robots were evaluated. The participants had more positive impressions of the robots gazing at them with two eye modules compared with one eye module. For the robots which worked using one eye module, however, participants evaluated the robots gazing at them with another eye module as having better performance than the robots gazing at them with two eye modules including a working eye module. In Study 2, the participants experienced six types of sound with three pitch changes (monotonous, ascending, descending) and two lengths (short, long). The results demonstrated that the attributes of the non-verbal sounds can be used to express both positivity and emotion. In this paper, the implications of the non-verbal cue design for FRCs are discussed.