EmoACT: a Framework to Embed Emotions into Artificial Agents Based on Affect Control Theory

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Corrao, Francesca, Nardelli, Alice, Renoux, Jennifer, Recchiuto, Carmine Tommaso
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Corrao, Francesca
Nardelli, Alice
Renoux, Jennifer
Recchiuto, Carmine Tommaso
author_facet Corrao, Francesca
Nardelli, Alice
Renoux, Jennifer
Recchiuto, Carmine Tommaso
contents As robots and artificial agents become increasingly integrated into daily life, enhancing their ability to interact with humans is essential. Emotions, which play a crucial role in human interactions, can improve the naturalness and transparency of human-robot interactions (HRI) when embodied in artificial agents. This study aims to employ Affect Control Theory (ACT), a psychological model of emotions deeply rooted in interaction, for the generation of synthetic emotions. A platform-agnostic framework inspired by ACT was developed and implemented in a humanoid robot to assess its impact on human perception. Results show that the frequency of emotional displays impacts how users perceive the robot. Moreover, appropriate emotional expressions seem to enhance the robot's perceived emotional and cognitive agency. The findings suggest that ACT can be successfully employed to embed synthetic emotions into robots, resulting in effective human-robot interactions, where the robot is perceived more as a social agent than merely a machine.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_12125
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle EmoACT: a Framework to Embed Emotions into Artificial Agents Based on Affect Control Theory
Corrao, Francesca
Nardelli, Alice
Renoux, Jennifer
Recchiuto, Carmine Tommaso
Robotics
As robots and artificial agents become increasingly integrated into daily life, enhancing their ability to interact with humans is essential. Emotions, which play a crucial role in human interactions, can improve the naturalness and transparency of human-robot interactions (HRI) when embodied in artificial agents. This study aims to employ Affect Control Theory (ACT), a psychological model of emotions deeply rooted in interaction, for the generation of synthetic emotions. A platform-agnostic framework inspired by ACT was developed and implemented in a humanoid robot to assess its impact on human perception. Results show that the frequency of emotional displays impacts how users perceive the robot. Moreover, appropriate emotional expressions seem to enhance the robot's perceived emotional and cognitive agency. The findings suggest that ACT can be successfully employed to embed synthetic emotions into robots, resulting in effective human-robot interactions, where the robot is perceived more as a social agent than merely a machine.
title EmoACT: a Framework to Embed Emotions into Artificial Agents Based on Affect Control Theory
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.12125