"Synthetic Social Interactions with a Robot using the BASIC personality model"

Supervised by Dr DM Romano

Abstract

Over recent years more and more work has been done in developing both virtual and synthetic characters that are able to interact with both users and environment in a realistic manner. Many emotional models have been designed and incorporated into these characters to allow these interactions to take place, ranging from both biological and functional models, however recent work done by Romano, Sheppard, Hall, Miller, Ma (2005) represents an innovative model that is capable of creating social relationships with the characters it interacts with in a virtual environment.

This report discusses the correction of errors within this proposed model and the testing of these changes. It also addresses the incorporation of this model into a synthetic robot head known as CIM (Creative Interactive Media) developed in order to express emotion via facial expressions. Using this model and robot this paper will discuss the creation of a frame work to control the robot, the creation universally recognizable expressions and their tests upon a group of subjects along with an analysis of this test.