Survey and Perspective on Social Emotions in Robotics

Abstract: This study reviews research on social emotions in robotics. In robotics, the study of emotions has been pursued for a long time, including the study of their recognition, expression, and computational modeling of the basic mechanisms which underlie them. Research has advanced according to well-known psychological findings, such as category and dimension theories. Many studies have been based on these basic theories, addressing only basic emotions. However, social emotions, also referred to as higher-level emotions, have been studied in psychology. We believe that these higher-level emotions are worth pursuing in robotics for next-generation, socially aware robots. In this review paper, we summarize the findings on social emotions in psychology and neuroscience, along with a survey of the studies on social emotions in robotics that have been conducted to date. Thereafter, research directions toward the implementation of social emotions in robots are discussed.