This paper presents two experiments focusing on perception of mechanical sounds produced by expressive robot movement and blended sonifications thereof. In the first experiment, 31 participants evaluated emotions conveyed by robot sounds through free-form text descriptions. The sounds were inherently produced by the movements of a NAO robot and were not specifically designed for communicative purposes. Results suggested no strong coupling between the emotional expression of gestures and how sounds inherent to these movements were perceived by listeners; joyful gestures did not necessarily result in joyful sounds. A word that reoccurred in text descriptions of all sounds, regardless of the nature of the expressive gesture, was “stress”. In the second experiment, blended sonification was used to enhance and further clarify the emotional expression of the robot sounds evaluated in the first experiment. Analysis of quantitative ratings of 30 participants revealed that the blended sonification successfully contributed to enhancement of the emotional message for sound models designed to convey frustration and joy. Our findings suggest that blended sonification guided by perceptual research on emotion in speech and music can successfully improve communication of emotions through robot sounds in auditory-only conditions.

本文提出了两个实验，重点放在感知由表现性机器人运动产生的机械声音及其混合声处理上。在第一个实验中，有31位参与者通过自由形式的文字描述评估了机器人声音所传达的情感。声音是由NAO机器人的动作固有地产生的，并非专门为交流目的而设计的。结果表明手势的情感表达与听众如何感知这些动作所固有的声音之间没有强烈的耦合。欢乐的手势并不一定会产生欢乐的声音。无论表达手势的性质如何，在所有声音的文本描述中都反复出现的单词是“重音”。在第二个实验中 混合声处理用于增强并进一步阐明第一个实验中评估的机器人声音的情感表达。对30位参与者的定量评分进行的分析显示，混合声处理成功地增强了旨在传达沮丧和欢乐的声音模型的情感信息。我们的研究结果表明，在语音和音乐情感感知研究的指导下，混合声处理可以通过仅在听觉条件下的机器人声音来成功改善情感交流。