Face Robot Performing Interaction with Emphasis on Eye Blink Entrainment

Abstract

Eyes play a significant role in human-human interaction, and blinking is particularly important as it can indicate a pause in the conversation and even lead to eye blink entrainment. However, most communication robots cannot reproduce eye blink movements due to cost constraints. Thus, our aim is to create a low-cost robot that can physically reproduce eye blink movements and induce eye blink entrainment. In this paper, we describe the implementation of the robot and evaluate the subjective impression of the robot’s eye blink movements. Our results suggest that the robot’s blinking behavior at pauses in the conversation facilitated the participants’ understanding of the robot’s speech. Our findings also suggest that simulating eye blink entrainment movement can increase the participant’s affinity and acceptance towards the robot in certain cases, and if the blinking is not well designed, affinity may be adversely affected.