A Soothing Software Robot: Modeling Users' Emotions from Utterances

Abstract

In stressful modern societies, robot therapy has attracted attention. This therapy consists of talking, touching, and interacting with a robot, like a pet, in order to obtain comfort. Some such pet robots have already been built. In order to feel comforted, not only must robots have emotions but also they should interpret human emotions and be considerate of others. The software named "Lea" has two original concepts that are an emotion dictionary and a behavior database. Lea receives voice input, and a Graphical User Interface (GUI) displays text and expressive facial graphics. Experiments with Lea have shown that 79% of people reacted positively in spite of lowness that is 57% adequacy of reactions. It is considered that cuteness and friendliness redeemed inappropriate reactions. It issues that enhancing the accuracy of inferring the user’s emotion and deciding the reaction in the future.