The Effects of Robot Voices and Appearances on Users' Emotion Recognition and Subjective Perception

Authors

Sangjin Ko, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Jaclyn A. Barnes, Michigan Technological UniversityFollow
Jiayuan Dong, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Chung Hyuk Park, The George Washington University
Ayanna Howard, The Ohio State University
Myounghoon Jeon, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-2023

Department

Department of Computer Science

Abstract

As the influence of social robots in people's daily lives grows, research on understanding people's perception of robots including sociability, trust, acceptance, and preference becomes more pervasive. Research has considered visual, vocal, or tactile cues to express robots' emotions, whereas little research has provided a holistic view in examining the interactions among different factors influencing emotion perception. We investigated multiple facets of user perception on robots during a conversational task by varying the robots' voice types, appearances, and emotions. In our experiment, 20 participants interacted with two robots having four different voice types. While participants were reading fairy tales to the robot, the robot gave vocal feedback with seven emotions and the participants evaluated the robot's profiles through post surveys. The results indicate that (1) the accuracy of emotion perception differed depending on presented emotions, (2) a regular human voice showed higher user preferences and naturalness, (3) but a characterized voice was more appropriate for expressing emotions with significantly higher accuracy in emotion perception, and (4) participants showed significantly higher emotion recognition accuracy with the animal robot than the humanoid robot. A follow-up study (N=10) with voice-only conditions confirmed that the importance of embodiment. The results from this study could provide the guidelines needed to design social robots that consider emotional aspects in conversations between robots and users.

Publisher's Statement

© The Author(s). Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219843623500019

Publication Title

International Journal of Humanoid Robotics

Recommended Citation

Ko, S., Barnes, J. A., Dong, J., Park, C., Howard, A., & Jeon, M. (2023). The Effects of Robot Voices and Appearances on Users' Emotion Recognition and Subjective Perception. International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, 20(1). http://doi.org/10.1142/S0219843623500019
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p/17078

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Version

Publisher's PDF