Affect and embodiment in HRI

Abstract

Both affect and embodiment have enormous importance for the field of HRI, which is increasingly interested in how the manifestation of the forms of robot embodiment influences the emotional state of the user. Designing and evaluating the affectivity of the robot body has become a frontier topic in HRI. To date, this is one of the few HRI workshops dedicated to affective robotics, and we propose three objectives: to identify relevant questions for the design of robotic bodies with high affective qualities; to consider cross-currents in ethical, philosophical, and methodological questions in studying emotional relations between humans and robots; and to foster synergies among designers, engineers, and social scientists in affective robotics.