Study of Emotion Rendering Design for Humanoid Robots Compiled with Real-Time Music Mood Perception

Abstract

This study focuses on the role of anthropomorphic robots in rendering emotion and expressive behavior, either in entertainment or communicative scenarios. An integrated system was proposed to demonstrate the emotional movements of humanoid robot inspired by the real-time music emotions. The music emotions tracking system progressively extracts the features of music and characterizes music-induced emotions in an emotion plane to trace the real-time emotion locus of music. The Thayer's model of mood is consisted of four quadrants: (i)Contentment, (ii)Depression, (iii)Anxious, (iv)Exuberance. Each emotion is quantized to three levels to express the degree of mood. A humanoid robot is used as a base robot that allows for 17 Degree-Of-Freedom (DOF) movement. The motions designs for emotional expression are based on Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) to construct a quantifiable action description system. The system is capable of describing and interpreting many varieties of human movements. Furthermore, a questionnaire survey is conducted to evaluate the results of proposed emotions rendering system judged by the participants' experience. For the comparative emotion model checklist, 53 participants had to rate their felt emotional reaction to emotions movement on all three motions levels checklists. Good agreement has been obtained between motion design expression and questionnaire survey evaluations.