New Scientist has posted an interesting article and accompanying video on the rise of the emotional robot. The article starts by noting the researchers' observation that owners of personal robots often grow an emotional attachment to the machines. The results is having people name their robots or treat them as if they have emotions. The popular robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba seems to hold a special place in the hearts of those who own one; recent studies have shown that many Roomba owners name, dress, and assign a gender to their robotic vacuum cleaners.
Kathy Morgan, an engineer based in Atlanta, said that her robot wore a sticker saying "Our Baby", indicating that she viewed it almost as part of the family. "We just love it. It frees up our lives from so much cleaning drudgery," she says.
I find the article's title a bit misleading because the article talks about people projecting their emotional state to the machines and not the machines displaying emotion themselves (or having been programmed to try and display emotion in order to ease the interaction with their human owners.) I better title would have been "The rise of the emotionally treated robot."
That said, the following video describes some of the work on human-robot interaction that was recently presented in the annual HRI conference held in Amsterdam. Being able to extract the emotional state of the user from observing his/her body language and facial expressions can go a long way in improving human-robot interaction interfaces.
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