Robot with Feelings

Students at the University of Lincoln have two new friends - emotional robot ERWIN and a 3-D humanistic android called Keepon.

The pair of 'friendly' robots are helping scientists to understand how more realistic long-term relationships could be developed between humans and robots.

ERWIN - Emotional Robot with Intelligent Network - can express basic human emotion and is the brainchild of Dr John Murray, from the School of Computer Science.

It is now being used as part of a PhD study to find out how some of the human-like thought biases in robot characteristics affect the human-robot relationship.

The research could also unlock barriers to understand how relationships are formed by children with autism, Asperger's syndrome or an attachment disorder.

PhD student Mriganka Biswas said: “Cognitive biases make humans what they are, fashioning characteristics and personality, complete with errors and imperfections.

"Therefore, introducing cognitive biases in a robot's characteristics makes the robot imperfect by nature, but also more human-like.

“Based on human interactions and relationships, we will introduce 'characteristics' and 'personalities' to the robot.

"And if we can explain how human-to-human long-term relationships begin and develop, then it would be easier to plan the human-robot relationship.”

ERWIN has the ability to express five basic emotions while interacting with a human.

The ‘non-emotive’ Keepon will be used in the research project to study the different reactions people have to it compared to the emotive ERWIN.