Emotion interaction system for a service robot

This paper introduces an emotion interaction system for a service robot. The purpose of emotion interaction systems in service robots is to make people feel that the robot is not a mere machine, but reliable living assistant in the home. The emotion interaction system is composed of the emotion recognition, generation, and expression systems. A user's emotion is recognized by multi-modality, such as voice, dialogue, and touch. The robot's emotion is generated according to a psychological theory about emotion: OCC (Ortony, Clore, and Collins) model, which focuses on the user's emotional state and the information about environment and the robot itself. The generated emotion is expressed by facial expression, gesture, and the musical sound of the robot. Because the proposed system is composed of all the three components that are necessary for a full emotional interaction cycle, it can be implemented in the real robot system and be tested. Even though the multi-modality in emotion recognition and expression is still in its rudimentary stages, the proposed system is shown to be extremely useful in service robot applications. Furthermore, the proposed framework can be a cornerstone for the design of emotion interaction and generation systems for robots.