Emotion Expression in HRI – When and Why

In this paper, we draw attention to the social functions of emotional display in interaction. A review of HRI papers on emotion suggests that this perspective is rarely taken in the field, but that it is useful to account for the context- and culture-dependency of emotional expression. We show in two case studies that emotional display is expected to occur at very specific places in interaction and rather independently from general emotional states, and that different cultures have different conventions regarding emotional expression. Based on conversation analytic work and the results from our case studies, we present design recommendations which allow the implementation of specific emotional signals for different human-robot interaction situations.