Design of a Pupil Response Robot that Listens with Empathy

Many proverbs using nonverbal behaviors in human communication are related to human eyes, such as ``the eyes speak as much as the mouth'' and ``the eyes are the mirror of the soul.'' This is because human eyes are an interface that easily reflects own emotions and are recognized as a social clue to convey emotions and feelings in human communication. It is considered that people infer emotions of others in communication by integrating not only global cues such as "gaze" but also local cues such as "pupils." Therefore, it will be possible to clarify human emotional behaviors and design human-like emotional behaviors by recreating the artificial eyes that integrates gaze and pupils. In particular, one of the human-like behaviors is listening attitude by the listener. Listening attitude is an essential behavior for empathizing with the speaker's emotions or cheering his/her up and an important factor in building a trusting relationship with the speaker. This listening attitude has not been realized even in current AI and is an important challenge in solving human-likeness. In this study, a pupil response robot that listens with empathy was designed. This robot imitates human-like eyeball by projecting CG images of the iris and pupil onto hemispherical displays. In addition, it generates nodding movements, eye contact, and pupil dilation as an active listening attitude. Through experience events, it was confirmed that the developed robot is effective for the listening with empathy.