Robo-Friend: Can a Social Robot Empathize with Your Feelings Effectively?

Abstract

<p>Social robots are becoming more popular everyday because of their resemblance with human behavior and interaction styles. They should be treated more like companions rather than just a fancy source of entertainment. Recent studies have shown great promise for robots to act as teachers, companions, caregivers and so on. In this study, primarily, a feasibility analysis is done to find out the way how a social robot can be used as a companion where it can sense the emotions of the users, empathize with their feelings and provide feedback with a view to changing their mood. A context study was conducted to make design implications where user experience goals such as inspiration, sense of control, relaxation, accomplishment and confidence were considered in the implementation. Furthermore, a prototype was designed based on a social robot, Pepper which then was interacted with potential users, either in groups or individually. The results support the fact that, a well-implemented social robot can effectively empathize with human users’ emotions.</p>