Robot behavior expression by illusion of life

Abstract

From long before, the puppeteers and animators have realized that the trick of behavior expression of the artifacts, such as the marionettes or cartoon characters, is to produce the illusion of life in the audiences. This principle can be applied to behavior design of the social robots that communicate with people through body movements. Accordingly, the emphasis of robot behavior design should be placed on the visual effects that are helpful to produce the illusion of life but not to copy human motion strictly. To produce the illusion of life, the artists give emotions and personalities to the animated film characters while the computer animators add more features like reactivity and adaptation to the interactive figures. The illusion of life produced by expressive behaviors of the robots in social and network environment can be enhanced with human robot interaction.