• Introducing Nikola, the emotional androi

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Wed Feb 16 21:30:50 2022
    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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