Modeling Touch Timing and Length to Express Complex Emotions
Xiqian Zheng, Masahiro Shiomi, Takashi Minato, Hiroshi Ishiguro · 2024
This study explores the impact of grip timing and duration on the expression of emotions by a robot while watching a video stimulus with people. Although past research on human–robot touch interactions has largely focused on the types of touch behaviors used to express emotions, the timing and duration of these behaviors have received less attention. We investigated this aspect of such interactions by collecting data to determine the appropriate grip timing and duration for expressing heartwarming and horror emotions. Participants identified their desired touch (grip) timing and duration while viewing video stimuli. They generally preferred a grip timing before the climax for horror videos and after it for heartwarming videos. We modeled the robot’s timing and duration with a fitting approach to a probabilistic distribution to reproduce human-like touch behaviors and subsequently implemented our models on an android robot.