Survey of Psychophysiology Measurements Applied to Human-Robot Interaction

This paper reviews the literature related to the use of psychophysiology measures in human-robot interaction (HRI) studies in an effort to address the fundamental question of appropriate metrics and methodologies for evaluating HRI research, especially affect. It identifies four main methods of evaluation in HRI studies: (1) self-report measures, (2) behavioral measures, (3) psychophysiology measures, and (4) task performance. However, the paper also shows that using only one of these measures for evaluation is insufficient to provide a complete evaluation and interpretation of the interactions between a robot and the human with which it is interacting. In addition, the paper describes exemplar HRI studies which use psychophysiological measures; these implementations fall into three categories: detection and/or identification of specific emotions of participants from physiological signals, evaluation of participants´ responses to a robot through physiological signals, and development and implementation of real-time control and modification of robot behaviors using physiological signals. Two open research questions on psychophysiological metrics were identified as a result of this review.