Introducing Nikola, the emotional android kid
Date:
February 16, 2022
Source:
RIKEN
Summary:
Researchers have made an android child named Nikola that
successfully conveys six basic emotions -- happiness, sadness, fear,
anger, surprise, and disgust. Facial expressions are generated by
moving 'muscles' in Nikola's face. This is the first time that the
quality of android- expressed emotion has been tested and verified
for these six emotions.
FULL STORY ========================================================================== Researchers from the RIKEN Guardian Robot Project in Japan have made
an android child named Nikola that successfully conveys six basic
emotions. The new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, tested
how well people could identify six facial expressions -- happiness,
sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust - - which were generated
by moving "muscles" in Nikola's face. This is the first time that the
quality of android-expressed emotion has been tested and verified for
these six emotions.
========================================================================== Rosie the robot maid was considered science fiction when she debuted
on the Jetson's cartoon over 50 years ago. Although the reality of
the helpful robot is currently more science and less fiction, there
are still many challenges that need to be met, including being able to
detect and express emotions. The recent study led by Wataru Sato from
the RIKEN Guardian Robot Project focused on building a humanoid robot,
or android, that can use its face to express a variety of emotions. The
result is Nikola, an android head that looks like a hairless boy.
Inside Nikola's face are 29 pneumatic actuators that control the
movements of artificial muscles. Another 6 actuators control head and
eyeball movements.
Pneumatic actuators are controlled by air pressure, which makes the
movements silent and smooth. The team placed the actuators based on the
Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which has been used extensively to
study facial expressions. Past research has identified numerous facial
action units -- such as 'cheek raiser' and 'lip pucker' -- that comprise typical emotions such as happiness or disgust, and the researchers
incorporated these action units in Nikola's design.
Typically, studies of emotions, particularly how people react to emotions,
have a problem. It is difficult to do a properly controlled experiment
with live people interacting, but at the same time, looking at photos or
videos of people is less natural, and reactions aren't the same. "The
hope is that with androids like Nikola, we can have our cake and eat
it too," says Sato. "We can control every aspect of Nikola's behavior,
and at the same time study live interactions." The first step was to
see if Nikola's facial expressions were understandable.
A person certified in FACS scoring was able to identify each facial
action unit, indicating that Nikola's facial movements accurately
resemble those of a real human. A second test showed that everyday
people could recognize the six prototypical emotions -- happiness,
sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust -- in Nikola's face, albeit
to varying accuracies. This is because Nikola's silicone skin is less
elastic than real human skin and cannot form wrinkles very well. Thus,
emotions like disgust were harder to identify because the action unit
for nose wrinkling could not be included.
"In the short term, androids like Nikola can be important research tools
for social psychology or even social neuroscience," says Sato. "Compared
with human confederates, androids are good at controlling behaviors
and can facilitate rigorous empirical investigation of human social interactions." As an example, the researchers asked people to rate the naturalness of Nikola's emotions as the speed of his facial movements was systematically controlled. They researchers found that the most natural
speed was slower for some emotions like sadness than it was for others
like surprise.
While Nikola still lacks a body, the ultimate goal of the Guardian Robot Project is to build an android that can assist people, particularly
those which physical needs who might live alone. "Androids that can
emotionally communicate with us will be useful in a wide range of
real-life situations, such as caring for older people, and can promote
human wellbeing," says Sato.
special promotion Explore the latest scientific research on sleep and
dreams in this free online course from New Scientist -- Sign_up_now_>>> ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by RIKEN. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.
========================================================================== Related Multimedia:
* Nikola's_facial_actions_and_expressions ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Wataru Sato, Shushi Namba, Dongsheng Yang, Shin'ya Nishida,
Carlos Ishi,
Takashi Minato. An Android for Emotional Interaction: Spatiotemporal
Validation of Its Facial Expressions. Frontiers in Psychology,
2022; 12 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.800657 ==========================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220216095846.htm
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