Graphical Social Interface

The ability for robots to communicate effectively with people they are assisting is critical to their acceptance in society. People intuitively receive information from other people by facial expressions and so this is a useful avenue for robots to communicate with non technical users. It is however also important to limit users expectation of the robot, as while it may have certain attributes similar to a human, robots cannot yet provide the same level of intelligence. A graphical face was therefore designed which can display familiar human emotions but is quite clearly not human. This face can display five distinct emotions; neutral, happy, sad, surprised and angry. Additionally the robot’s eyes can point to indicate where the robot’s attention is focus and also blink to show the robot is active.

The social interface was implemented on the Robbie robot.

The social interface mounted on Robbie