The Uncanny valley hypothesis, which tells us that almost-human characteristics in a robot or a device could cause uneasiness in human observers, is an important research theme in the Human Robot Interaction (HRI) field. Yet, that phenomenon is still not well-understood. Many have investigated the external design of humanoid robot faces and bodies but only a few studies have focused on the influence of robot movements on our perception and feelings of the Uncanny valley. Moreover, no research has investigated the possible relation between our uneasiness feeling and whether or not we would accept robots having a job in an office, a hospital or elsewhere. To better understand the Uncanny valley, we explore several factors which might have an influence on our perception of robots, be it related to the subjects, such as culture or attitude toward robots, or related to the robot such as emotions and emotional intensity displayed in its motion. We asked 69 subjects (N = 69) to rate the motions of a humanoid robot (Perceived Humanity, Eeriness, and Attractiveness) and state where they would rather see the robot performing a task. Our results suggest that, among the factors we chose to test, the attitude toward robots is the main influence on the perception of the robot related to the Uncanny valley. Robot occupation acceptability was affected only by Attractiveness, mitigating any Uncanny valley effect. We discuss the implications of these findings for the Uncanny valley and the acceptability of a robotic worker in our society.

Walking is one of the most common activities that we perform every day. Even if the main goal of walking is to move from one place to another place, walking can also convey emotional clues in social context. Those clues can be used to improve interactions or any messages we want to express. However, there are not many studies on the effects of the intensity of the emotions on the walking. In this paper, the authors propose to assess the differences between the expression of emotion regarding the expressed intensity (low, middle, high and exaggerated). We observed two professional actors perform emotive walking, with different intensities and we analyzed the recorded data. For each emotion, we analyzed characteristic features which can be used in the future to model gait patterns and to recognize emotions from the gait parameters. Additionally, we found characteristics which can be used to create new emotion expression for our biped robot Kobian, improving the human-robot interaction.

Humanoid robots progress everyday closer and closer to a more stable walking suitable for a human environment as the researchers in the Humanoid robotics field focus their effort on the understanding of the human locomotion. Nonetheless for Social Robotics researchers, humanoid robots might have another use, such as being our companions from birth to nursing home. Designing social humanoid robots is one critical step if we want the robots to be active in our society. However, to our knowledge, only a few studies in the area of humanoid robotics have addressed emotion expression with robot gaits. In this paper we propose to assess different emotional gait patterns and the perception of the emotion intensity in those patterns. Actors' emotional movement were captured and then normalized for our robot platform. Several robot simulations were shown to human observers who completed a survey questionnaire in which they indicated their assessment of the portrayed emotion by the robot simulation. The surveyed emotions consist of Sadness, Happiness, Anger, Fear with different intensities (Intermediate, High and Exaggerated). We achieved a high recognition rate of emotions (72.32%). Even if the intensities were less well recognized (33.63%), our study indicates that the intensity might help the recognition of emotional walking.

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