Abstract
This study investigated the effects of touch characteristics that change the strength and the naturalness of the emotions perceived by people in human-robot touch interaction with an android robot that has a feminine, human-like appearance. Past studies on human-robot touch interaction focused on understanding what kinds of human touches conveyed emotion to robots, i.e., the robot's touch characteristics that can affect people's perceived emotions received less focus. In this study, we concentrated on three touch characteristics (length, type, and part) based on arousal/valence perspectives, and their effects on the perceived strength/naturalness of a commonly used emotion in human-robot interaction, i.e., happiness, and its counterpart emotion, (i.e., sadness), borrowing Ekman's definitions. Our results showed that the touch length and its type are useful to change the perceived strengths and the naturalness of the expressed emotions based on the arousal/valence perspective, although the touch part did not fit such perspective assumptions. Finally, our results suggest that a brief pat and a longer contact by the fingers are better combinations to express happy and sad emotions with our robot. Since we only used a female android, we discussed future works with a male humanoid robot and/or a robot whose appearance is less humanoid.
Highlights
T OUCH is an essential factor in emotional communication for human beings in conjunction with facial expressions and language
We focused on just two of Ekman’s basic emotions for two reasons: 1) comparing all six emotions combined with all the permutations of touch characteristics would greatly complicate our analysis, and 2) happiness and sadness are the most typical emotions used in designing human-robot interactions, and the scenarios that use the remaining four are situational and less frequent
We investigated the relationship between an android’s touch characteristics and its perceived strength and naturalness in the context of expressing typical emotions to an interacting person in human-robot interaction, happy and sad
Summary
T OUCH is an essential factor in emotional communication for human beings in conjunction with facial expressions and language. Various human science literatures have revealed how touch interactions are used between people [1]–[3] and how touch shapes emotions [4]–[6]. The positive and negative effects of touch interactions have been broadly investigated, for instance, its importance for human well-being [7]–[9]. This letter was recommended for publication by Associate Editor S.
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