Expression of Robot’s Emotion and Intention Utilizing Physical Positioning in Conversation

Abstract

More and more robots are providing services that involve conversations with people in daily life. Among them, the movement and positioning of the robot are effective factors to improve the robot’s expression, and the distance from the human and the direction of the robot are reported as important parameters. In multi-person dialogues, it is expected that robots can communicate their impressions, emotions, and thoughts to other robots by successfully adjusting their movement and positioning. We investigated the effect of the robot’s movement in a conversation on the subsequent conversation and the expression of the moving robot. It was found that there were intentions and emotions of the robot that could be expressed by moving forward and backward, respectively. The next step of this experiment is to conduct interaction between subjects using a system that incorporates forward and backward movements.