Human understanding of robot's intended emotional expressions directly and via screen

The purpose of this research project is to create a robot head that communicates emotions by mimicking head, eye and facial expressions using motion controlled LED display. The robot head is built and programmed to express eight emotions based on the core affect, proposed by James A. Russell. Moreover, we conducted an experiment in which we study the ability of human to recognize these expressions; directly and via screen. In the experiment, volunteers completed questionnaires about perceived emotional expressions of the robot head. As a result, we found that watching expressions on screen significantly reduces human's ability to recognize robot's intended emotional expressions.