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Modelling Empathy in Social Robotic Companions

  • Conference paper
Advances in User Modeling (UMAP 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 7138))

Abstract

Empathy can be broadly defined as the ability to understand and respond appropriately to the affective states of others. In this paper, we present a scenario where a social robot acts as a chess companion for children, and describe our current efforts towards endowing such robot with empathic capabilities. A multimodal framework for modeling some of the user’s affective states that combines visual and task-related features is presented. Using this model of the user, we personalise the learning environment by adapting the robot’s empathic responses to the particular preferences of the child who is interacting with the robot. We also describe a preliminary study conducted in this scenario.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal

    Iolanda Leite, André Pereira, Samuel Mascarenhas, Carlos Martinho & Ana Paiva

  2. HCI Centre, School of Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Ginevra Castellano

Authors
  1. Iolanda Leite
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  2. André Pereira
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  3. Ginevra Castellano
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  4. Samuel Mascarenhas
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  5. Carlos Martinho
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  6. Ana Paiva
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Torino, Corso Svizzera 185, 10149, Torino, Italy

    Liliana Ardissono

  2. Information Systems Department, The University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, 31905, Haifa, Israel

    Tsvi Kuflik

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Leite, I., Pereira, A., Castellano, G., Mascarenhas, S., Martinho, C., Paiva, A. (2012). Modelling Empathy in Social Robotic Companions. In: Ardissono, L., Kuflik, T. (eds) Advances in User Modeling. UMAP 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7138. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28509-7_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28509-7_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-28508-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-28509-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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