There is a lack of research on how drones are perceived and understood by humans, which is vastly different than ground robots. says Prof. Jessica Cauchard together with Viviane Herdel of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Magic Lab, in the Department of Industrial Engineering & Management. For the first time, we showed that people can recognize different emotions and discriminate between different emotion intensities.
Drones can elicit emotions from people, which could help integrate them into society more easily
Joy, sadness, fear, anger, and surprise were the easiest to recognize. A A
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Could we learn to love a robot? Maybe. New research suggests that drones, at least, could elicit an emotional response in people if we put cute little faces on them.
A set of rendered faces representing six basic emotions in three different intensity levels that were used in the study. Image credits Viviane Herdel.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have examined how people react to a wide range of facial expressions depicted on a drone. The study aims to deepen our understanding of how flying drones might one day integrate into society, and how human-robot interactions, in general, can be made to feel more natural an area of research that hasn’t been explored very much until today.