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Physiologically Inspired Blinking Behavior for a Humanoid Robot

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Book cover Social Robotics (ICSR 2016)

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Abstract

Blinking behavior is an important part of human nonverbal communication. It signals the psychological state of the social partner. In this study, we implemented different blinking behaviors for a humanoid robot with pronounced physical eyes. The blinking patterns implemented were either statistical or based on human physiological data. We investigated in an online study the influence of the different behaviors on the perception of the robot by human users with the help of the Godspeed questionnaire. Our results showed that, in the condition with human-like blinking behavior, the robot was perceived as being more intelligent compared to not blinking or statistical blinking. As we will argue, this finding represents the starting point for the design of a ‘holistic’ social robotic behavior.

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Acknowledgment

This research was funded by the EU via the Marie-Sklodowska Curie Action Program (SICSAR - grant agreement n° 627688).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, iCub Facility, via Morego 30, 16163, Genoa, Italy

    Hagen Lehmann, Ugo Pattacini & Giorgio Metta

  2. Social Robotics Lab, Yale University, 51 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut, 06511, USA

    Alessandro Roncone

Authors
  1. Hagen Lehmann
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  2. Alessandro Roncone
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  3. Ugo Pattacini
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  4. Giorgio Metta
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hagen Lehmann .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Indiana, USA

    Arvin Agah

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan

  3. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA

    Ayanna M. Howard

  4. Department of Systems Engineering and Automation, University Carlos III de Madrid, madrid, Spain

    Miguel A. Salichs

  5. Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

    Hongsheng He

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Lehmann, H., Roncone, A., Pattacini, U., Metta, G. (2016). Physiologically Inspired Blinking Behavior for a Humanoid Robot. In: Agah, A., Cabibihan, JJ., Howard, A., Salichs, M., He, H. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9979. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47437-3_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47437-3_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47436-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47437-3

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