Does Expression of Grounded Affect in a Hexapod Robot Elicit More Prosocial Responses?

—We consider how non-humanoid robots can communicate their affective state via bodily forms of communication, and the extent to which this can influence human response. We propose a simple model of grounded affect and kinesic expression and outline two experiments (N=9 and N=180) in which participants were asked to watch expressive and non-expressive hexapod robots perform different ‘scenes’. Our pre-liminary findings suggest the expressive robot stimulated greater desire for interaction, and was more likely to be attributed with emotion. It also elicited more desire for prosocial behaviour.