Child's recognition of emotions in robot's face and body

Abstract

Social robots can comfort and support children who have to cope with chronic diseases. In previous studies, a "facial robot", the iCat, proved to show well-recognized emotional expressions that are important in social interactions. The question is if a mobile robot without a face, the Nao, can express emotions with its body. First, dynamic body postures were created and validated that express fear, happiness, anger, sadness and surprise. Then, fourteen children had to recognize emotions, expressed by both robots. Recognition rates were relatively high (between 68% and 99% accuracy). Only for the emotion "sad", the recognition was better for the iCat (95%) compared to the Nao (68%). Providing context increased the number of correct recognitions. In a second session, the emotions were significantly better recognized than during the first session for both robots. In sum, we succeeded to design Nao emotions, which were well recognized and learned, and can be important ingredients of the social dialogs with children.