Survey and Perspective on Social Emotions in Robotics

This study reviews research on social emotions in robotics. In robotics, emotions are pursued for a long duration, such as recognition, expression, and computational modeling of the basic mechanism behind them. Research has been promoted according to well-known psychological findings, such as category and dimension theories. Many studies have been based on these basic theories, addressing only basic emotions. However, social emotions, also called higher-level emotions, have been studied in psychology. We believe that these higher-level emotions are worth pursuing in robotics for next-generation social-aware robots. In this review paper, while summarizing the findings of social emotions in psychology and neuroscience, studies on social emotions in robotics at present are surveyed. Thereafter, research directions towards implementation of social emotions in robots are discussed.