Empathy Simulation

Empathy Simulation

Duration: 2013 - 2016
Involved Scientists: Kathrin Janowski, Hannes RitschelFlorian LingenfelserJohannes Wagner,  Markus Häring, Birgit Lugrin

Description

The simplest form of empathy is to mirror the emotions that are observed in the conversation partner. For humans, this usually happens subconsciously.

Our prototype used the Social Signal Interpretation Framework (SSI) to analyze the user's tone of voice and facial expressions. The recognized emotions were then mapped to numerical values along the axes of "Pleasure" and "Arousal".

We used two RoboKind R-50 robots from the Texas-based company Hanson Robotics."Alice" and  "Zeno" each had a human-like body and additional motors under synthetic skin that allowed for adjusting their facial expressions. The application that controlled their behavior continuously matched their expressions and head pose to the emotional state detected by the SSI pipeline.

Furthermore, several lists of sentences were provided that the robots could use to comment on the situation when the user paused in speaking. The exact timing of the robots' speech depended on different factors, such as the intensity of the current emotional state or the time elapsed since its last comment.

Media Coverage

"Algorithmus der Gefühle - Menschliche Roboter"

("Algorithm of Feelings - Human Robots"

SWR2, May 2, 2016

to the report (German)


"Roboter Zeno: Ist es bescheuert, Gefühle für eine Maschine zu haben?"

("Robot Zeno: Is it stupid to have feelings for a machine?")

"Puls“, Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian radio), March 24, 2016

to the report (German)


"Extrem Robotern: Ein echt netter Typ"

("Extreme Roboting: A really nice guy")

Deutschlandfunk Nova, March 7, 2016

to the report (German)


"Robo Sapiens - Können Roboter den Menschen ersetzen?"

("Robo Sapiens - Can Robots Replace The Human?")

"X:enius", arte, June 18, 2015

to the report's description (German)


"Empathische Alice"

("Empathic Alice")

"Quarks & Co", WDR, November 12, 2013

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