Using Emotions to Complement Multi-Modal Human-Robot Interaction in Urban Search and Rescue Scenarios

An experiment is presented to investigate whether there is consensus in mapping emotions to messages/situations in urban search and rescue scenarios, where efficiency and effectiveness of interactions are key to success. We studied mappings between 10 specific messages, presented in two different communication styles, reflecting common situations that might happen during search and rescue missions, and the emotions exhibited by robots in those situations. The data was obtained through a Mechanical Turk study with 78 participants. Our findings support the feasibility of using emotions as an additional communication channel to improve multi-modal human-robot interaction for urban search and rescue robots, and suggests that these mappings are robust, i.e. are not affected by the robot's communication style.