Robots and emotion: a survey of trends, classifications, and forms of interaction

Abstract

The use of emotion to drive robotic interaction continues to grow across a range of use cases, from social robotics to increased survivability. Nevertheless, these efforts remain isolated from each other and are not easily compared between papers and projects. To this end an extensive survey of 1427 IEEE and ACM publications was conducted, covering robotics and emotion. The survey first resulted in broad categorizations of key trends covering emotional input and output. This was followed by an extended analysis on 232 papers that focused on the internal processing of emotion, where emotion was handled through some kind of algorithm and not just as an input or output. From this analysis, three broad categories were developed: emotional intelligence, emotional model, and implementation. Emotional intelligence captured the manner in which emotion was handled and included the subcategories: algorithm, mapping, and history. The emotional model category captured the emotion categories and number of emotions used, while the implementation category tracked the role, purpose, and platform. This paper concludes with a summary of key features discovered through the process, future opportunities, and a discussion of the intrinsic challenges emerging from the interaction of emotion and robotics.