Pupiloid: Development of a Pupil Response Robot for Emotional Expressions

Abstract

We focused on the pupil response which is related to human emotions for realizing smooth communication during embodied interactions between humans and robots, and analyzed the pupil response in human face-to-face communication. In addition, we developed an expressible pupil response interface using hemispherical displays on the basis of this analysis. This interface enables expression of the pupil response by using only speech input. In this study, we design and develop the pupil response robot called “Pupiloid” which expresses emotional response like human to enhance the sharing of empathy and embodiment. This robot generates the pupil response using the mechanism which rotates the feather sterically.