A pupil response system using hemispherical displays for enhancing affective conveyance

In human interaction and communication, not only verbal messages but also nonverbal behaviors such as facial expressions, body movements, gazes and pupil responses play an important role in expressions of talker’s affect. These expressions encourage to read the emotional cues and to cause the sharing of embodiment and empathy. We focused on the pupil response which is closely related to human affect, and developed an embodied communication system in which an interactive CG character generates the pupil response as well as communicative actions and movements such as nodding and body movements by speech input. In addition, it was confirmed that the pupil response is effective for supporting the embodied interaction and communication using the developed system. In this paper, in order to realize the smooth interaction between human and robot, we developed a pupil response system using hemispherical displays for enhancing affective conveyance. This system looks like robot’s eyeballs and expresses vivid pupil response by speech input. We carried out a sensory evaluation experiment under the condition that the developed system speaks. The results demonstrated that the system effectively enhances affective conveyance.