Emotive Acoustics: Sound Design in Robotic Emotion Expression. A Study on Participant Generated Sounds

Human-robot interactions (HRI) can be made much more immersive by using sounds. Regarding this, a study was carried out to explore different types of sounds that may be more suitable for HRI. Participants were presented with a video in which a social robot navigates in a context and expresses six basic emotions in specific situations. The participants generated sounds for each emotion displayed by the robot in the video. Results revealed a preference for human-like sounds, especially onomatopoeia. Moreover, most participants deemed the sounds produced by current robots in general as inappropriate and lacking empathy, primarily due to their resemblance with machine-like noises. The study provides specific insights into the perception of audio expressions, which are helpful in creating inclusive and emotionally compelling HRI. The results highlight how crucial it is to give social robots more human-like auditory features.