Subjective Effects of Face Change with Emotion Transition by Using Emotional Space of Communication Robot “Ifbot”

Abstract

To improve face-to-face interactions between people and the robot,“Ifbot”, we propose a facial expression control method that searches the path with the lowest facial changes in the emotional space created by an auto-associative neural network. Unlike methods based on linear changes of facial control parameters, our method can create delightful and humorous face changes. We report that this method shows characteristics that combine the linear changes of facial control parameters with the linear changes of coordinate points in emotional space. These results suggest that the facial expressions Ifbot creates using this method can increase diversity of interaction.