Analysis and Prediction of Emotions Using Human-robot and Driver-vehicle Interaction

This dissertation undertakes the study of human factors in two interconnected fields, the human-robot and driver-vehicle interactions. The first part of the study will be focused on human-robot interactions. Using a humanoid robot, for example, as an intermediary agent can significantly improve their rehabilitation and psychological treatments. Due to appealing design and configuration of humanoid robots in their appearance, motion and sound, they can draw patient's attention more efficiently. Along this line of reasoning, this research involved the use of humanoid robots with various communication abilities, such as speaking and executing hand and foot in interaction with humans and using for this, an experimental setup was proposed and designed to recognize human behavior in Gaze-communications with a robot using joint attention and eye contact. The experimental results demonstrated that participant's favorable feeling for the robot was more than other objects in the experiment. Hence, such robot-human interactions have the capability to make improved joint attention for therapeutic intervention. The second part of the study undertakes the driver-vehicle interactions and discusses ways this interaction can be used to influence driver in a positive way. Driver with anger state cannot influence perceived workload and moreover induced anger can reduce driver situation awareness. The Limbic system in human brain is so powerful that emotions can change how human think. Music can aid in the production of serotonin, which can make people happy. In this part of dissertation, our primary objective was to assess the effect of sudden music effect on driver when they get angry by internal or external/environmental causes. For physiological states measurement, heart rate, skin conductance and electromyography techniques were utilized to recognize driver's states as well as the effect of music type on driver's mood while driving. The results show that music has capability to influence physiological signs and potential to reduce the impact of negative emotion effect on human while driving in angry mood. In summary, this research provides some experimental work to demonstrate the importance of Human emotion and effects on the interaction of human machine systems and system performance.