Affective social robots

For human–robot interaction to proceed in a smooth, natural manner, robots must adhere to human social norms. One such human convention is the use of expressive moods and emotions as an integral part of social interaction. Such expressions are used to convey messages such as “I’m happy to see you” or “I want to be comforted,” and people’s long-term relationships depend heavily on shared emotional experiences. Thus, we have developed an affective model for social robots. This generative model attempts to create natural, human-like affect and includes distinctions between immediate emotional responses, the overall mood of the robot, and long-term attitudes toward each visitor to the robot, with a focus on developing long-term human–robot relationships. This paper presents the general affect model as well as particular details of our implementation of the model on one robot, the Roboceptionist. In addition, we present findings from two studies that demonstrate the model’s potential.