Emotion-based biped walking

Abstract

This paper describes emotion-based walking for a biped humanoid robot. In this paper, three emotions, such as happiness, sadness and anger are considered. These emotions are expressed by the walking styles of the biped humanoid robot that are preset by the parameterization of its whole body motion. To keep its balance during the emotional expressions, the motion of the trunk is employed which is calculated by the compensatory motion control based on the motions of the head, arms and legs. We have constructed a biped humanoid robot, WABIAB-RII (WAseda BIpedal humANoid robot-Revised II), to explore the issue of the emotional walking motion for a smooth and natural communication. WABIAN-RII has forty-three mechanical degrees of freedom and four passive degrees of freedom. Its height is about 1.84 m and its total weight is 127 kg. Using WABIAN-RII, three emotion expressions are experimented by the biped walking, including the body motion, and evaluated.

Emotional gait: Effects on humans' perception of humanoid robots

“…There are only few works known to us that used human-sized humanoid robots to express emotions. Lim et al [21] introduced for the first time emotional walking with the robot WABIAN-RII in 2004. Among other humanoids such as ASIMO or HRP-2, only Geminoid F expresses emotions and only its face is used [22].…”

Emotion expression of humanoid robot by modification of biped walking pattern

“…Consequently, adjustment of K and r for the joints in both legs and arms determines walk pattern of the humanoid robot. In addition, pitch angle of head and trunk will also contribute to express the current emotion more clearly as in [2].…”

“…Lim et. al. have developed the detailed method of expressing three emotions, such as happiness, sadness, and anger, using the whole-body motion and walking style [2]. However, description of parameters and gait characteristics are difficult to apply to small humanoid robots.…”

Assessment of the Impressions of Robot Bodily Expressions Using Electroencephalogram Measurement of Brain Activity

“…Since the pioneering work of (Johansson, 1973) on visual perception of biological motion, it has been known that humans can perceive a lot of information from body movements including the emotional state of the performer (Allison et al, 2000;Pollick et al, 2001). Recently, there is a growing interest in mathematically modeling emotion-based motion generation for real-world agents such as robots (Lim et al, 2004) and for virtual agents such as animated characters (Amaya et al, 1996). To be able to generate bodily expressions that reflect the selected emotions we rely on Laban features of movements (Bartenieff & Lewis, 1980).…”