{"50830":{"#nid":"50830","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Is My Robot happy to See Me?","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EPeople are social creatures. Robots \u2026 not so much. When we think of robots, we think of cold, metallic computers without emotion. If science fiction has taught us anything, though, it\u2019s that we crave emotion, even in our robots - think C-3PO, or Star Trek\u2019s Data. So it stands to reason that if robots are ever going to become a fixture in our society, even becoming integrated into our households, we need to be able to read their faces. But how good are we at reading robot faces? \u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EScientists at Georgia Tech decided to test our ability to interpret a robot\u2019s \u201cemotion\u201d by reading its expression to see if there were any differences between the ages. They found that older adults showed some unexpected differences in the way they read a robot\u2019s face from the way younger adults performed. The findings will be presented at the upcoming Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 53rd Annual Meeting, Grand Hyatt, San Antonio, Texas on Thursday, October 22.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cHome-based assistive robots have the potential to help older adults age in place. They have the potential to keep older adults independent longer, reduce healthcare needs and provide everyday assistance,\u201d said Jenay Beer, graduate student in Georgia Tech\u2019s School of Psychology. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EBeer, along with Wendy Rogers and Arthur Fisk, professors of Engineering Psychology at Georgia Tech and directors of the Human Factors and Aging Laboratory, used a virtual version of the iCat, called appropriately enough the virtual iCat, to test the difference among adults between the ages of 65 and 75 and 18 to 27. They had the virtual iCat exhibit seven emotions at various levels of intensity: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust and neutral. They tested how well each participant could read the emotions of the virtual iCat.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EExisting research on how well adults can recognize emotions on human faces has found that older adults are less accurate in recognizing anger, fear and sadness. But the robotic study found that older adults were less accurate in recognizing anger and fear, as expected, but had difficulty recognizing happiness, not sadness. In fact, they most often confused the happy expression with the neutral expression of the robot. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EBeer reasoned that the similar success both younger and older adults had in recognizing sadness could be due to the difference in the way a human actually expresses an emotion and the way it\u2019s exaggerated in art. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt may be due to the \u2018cartoon\u2019 look of the iCat, with the mouth turned down being very prominent,\u201d she said.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAs for why the older adults had trouble recognizing the happy robot compared with their success in recognizing happy people, Beer suspected that the robot just didn\u2019t do a good enough job of expressing its emotion.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u201cIt may be that older adults were not as cognizant of the facial features differentiating happy from neutral,\u201d she explained. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EResearchers also found that neither the young nor old could easily distinguish the emotion disgust on the virtual iCat. Beer explained that this could be due to the difficulty in programming a robot to show this emotion. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen humans express disgust, the nose is wrinkled and the lips are drawn back, creating creases on each side of the mouth,\u201d said Beer. \u201cManipulating these wrinkles is difficult for a robot made with a plastic face.\u201d\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EBeer is continuing her work by studying whether other virtual versions of robots show the same differences when compared to the virtual iCat and the human face. What seems clear already, though, is if robots are going to be accepted by older adults in any social situations, they need to be designed with emotion displays that are easy to recognize, with some of them potentially being exaggerated to overcome any trouble older adults may have in reading that emotion among human faces.\u0026nbsp;\n\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EScientists at Georgia Tech decided to test our ability to interpret a robot\u2019s \u201cemotion\u201d by reading its expression to see if there were any differences between the ages. They found that older adults showed some unexpected differences in the way they read a robot\u2019s face from the way younger adults performed.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Young and old read robotic expressions differently"}],"uid":"27310","created_gmt":"2009-10-14 00:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:04:16","author":"David Terraso","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2009-10-19T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2009-10-19T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"50832":{"id":"50832","type":"image","title":"Jenay Beer and iCat","body":null,"created":"1449175437","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:43:57","changed":"1475894473","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:41:13","alt":"Jenay Beer and 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Laboratory"}],"groups":[{"id":"1183","name":"Home"}],"categories":[{"id":"135","name":"Research"},{"id":"152","name":"Robotics"}],"keywords":[{"id":"8394","name":"flickr:http:\/\/api.flickr.com\/services\/feeds\/photoset.gne?set=72157622584373946\u0026nsid=40616330@N07\u0026lang=en-us"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["david.terraso@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}