Development of seahorse robot capable of expressing happiness, sadness and anger

This paper describes the mechanism and the control system of a seahorse robot that is able to express happiness, sadness and anger. MP motion sensors (Pyroelectric Motion Detection Sensor), force sensors, and color sensors are employed to express emotion. The seahorse robot consists of a base, a body and a head. It has 4 DOFs (2 DOFs in the head and 2 DOFs in the body) and it weighs 800 [g]. Emotion expression experiments are conducted to confirm the mechanism and the control system of the robot and are evaluated by ten subjects. After they watch the body color and motion), they select one of five emotions. The effectiveness of the mechanism and the control of the robot are verified through emotion experiments.