Cognitive Emotional Regulation Model in Human-Robot Interaction

This paper integrated Gross cognitive process into the HMM (hidden Markov model) emotional regulation method and implemented human-robot emotional interaction with facial expressions and behaviors. Here, energy was the psychological driving force of emotional transition in the cognitive emotional model. The input facial expression was translated into external energy by expression-emotion mapping. Robot’s next emotional state was determined by the cognitive energy (the stimulus after cognition) and its own current emotional energy’s size and source’s position. The two random quantities in emotional transition process—the emotional family and the specific emotional state in the AVS (arousal-valence-stance) 3D space—were used to simulate human emotion selection. The model had been verified by an emotional robot with 10 degrees of freedom and more than 100 kinds of facial expressions. Experimental results show that the emotional regulation model does not simply provide the typical classification and jump in terms of a set of emotional labels but that it operates in a 3D emotional space enabling a wide range of intermediary emotional states to be obtained. So the robot with cognitive emotional regulation model is more intelligent and real; moreover it can give full play to its emotional diversification in the interaction.