学术文献库

In the next decade, social robots will be implemented in many public spaces to provide services to humans. We question the properties of these social robots to afford acceptance and spontaneous emotional interactions. More specifically, in the present study, we report the effects of idle motion frequency in a robot on emotional contagion in a face-to-face interactive task with a human participant. The robotic system Buddy was programmed to adopt a sad posture and facial expression while telling three sad stories and moving its head up/down at low, medium, and high frequency. Each participant (N=15 total) was invited to sit in front of Buddy and listen to the stories. Unconscious changes in posture in the human participant were recorded using a 3D motion capture system (Qualysis). Results show greater inclinations of the shoulder/torso towards the ground in low-frequency trials and more rigid postures in high-frequency trials. The quantity of spontaneous movement was also greater when Buddy moved at slow frequencies. These findings echo results reported in experimental psychology when two individuals are engaged in social interactions. The scores obtained in the Godspeed questionnaire further suggest that emotional contagion may occur when Buddy moves slowly because the robotic system is perceived as more natural and knowledgeable, e.g., at speed coherent with the expressed emotion. Our work explores the importance of body posture and frequency of idle motion in the conception of robotic systems. Such additions could provide social robots that afford emotional contagion in effortless robot-human collaborative tasks.