Human evaluation of affective body motions expressed by a small-sized humanoid robot: Comparison between elder people and university students

Body motion expression is one of the useful methods that robots present their emotional states toward users. Since emotions themselves have cultural dependency, however, it is estimated that effects of affective body motions depend on users´ demographic factors such as gender and age. In order to clarify this dependence, a psychological experiment was conducted to investigate age differences on evaluation of affective body motions which were implemented into a small-sized humanoid robot. The results showed differences between younger and elder people on identification of emotions, body parts paid attention to, and impression of motion speed and magnitude for the affective body motions of the robot. The paper also discusses about the implications.