Perception of Emotions in Human and Robot Faces: Is the Eye Region Enough?

2024-10-18

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This study investigates how robotic appearance (anthropomorphic vs. mechanical) and facial display region (full face vs. eye region only) influence human emotion recognition. Method: A between-subjects video experiment was conducted with 305 participants, systematically manipulating robotic appearance while measuring emotion recognition accuracy across facial conditions. Contribution/Results: First, back-projection-based fully dynamic facial displays enable both mechanical and anthropomorphic robots to achieve human-level emotion recognition accuracy under full-face conditions—demonstrating, for the first time, parity with human expressivity. Second, restricting displays to the eye region significantly reduces recognition accuracy; however, anthropomorphic appearance mitigates this decline, highlighting its advantage in conveying affective cues under limited facial information. These findings reveal a critical interaction between appearance anthropomorphism and facial region salience, providing empirical grounding and a novel design paradigm for affective robotics.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Humans and AI: Emotional Intelligence
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Data quality aspects of human-annotated datasets
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Fairness-aware retrieval and ranking

Abstract

The increased interest in developing next-gen social robots has raised questions about the factors affecting the perception of robot emotions. This study investigates the impact of robot appearances (humanlike, mechanical) and face regions (full-face, eye-region) on human perception of robot emotions. A between-subjects user study (N = 305) was conducted where participants were asked to identify the emotions being displayed in videos of robot faces, as well as a human baseline. Our findings reveal three important insights for effective social robot face design in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI): Firstly, robots equipped with a back-projected, fully animated face - regardless of whether they are more human-like or more mechanical-looking - demonstrate a capacity for emotional expression comparable to that of humans. Secondly, the recognition accuracy of emotional expressions in both humans and robots declines when only the eye region is visible. Lastly, within the constraint of only the eye region being visible, robots with more human-like features significantly enhance emotion recognition.

Problem

• Investigates how robot appearances affect emotion perception
• Examines impact of face regions on emotion recognition
• Compares human and robot emotional expression effectiveness

Innovation

• Back-projected animated face enhances robot emotion expression
• Eye-region visibility reduces emotion recognition accuracy
• Human-like features improve emotion recognition in eye-region