Clever test tells you if you’re emotionally intelligent – it could reveal a LOT about your true personality
A TEST featuring an andriod can reveal if you’re emotionally intelligent while at the same time divulging a lot about your personality. Researchers from the RIKEN Guardian Robot Project in Japan have created a child robot named Nikola, which they say can successfully convey six basic human emotions. The robot’s face contains 29 pneumatic actuators […]
A TEST featuring an andriod can reveal if you’re emotionally intelligent while at the same time divulging a lot about your personality.
Researchers from the RIKEN Guardian Robot Project in Japan have created a child robot named Nikola, which they say can successfully convey six basic human emotions.
The robot’s face contains 29 pneumatic actuators that control a network of artificial muscles.
The devices allow Nikola to approximate the twists and tugs of the 42 individual muscles in the human face.
Another six actuators move the head and eyeballs powered by air pressure.
According to the researchers, Nikola was trained to mimic expressions using past analysis on distinctive characteristics of emotions – such as a raise of the eyebrow, a stretch of the cheek, a drop of the jaw, or a curl of the mouth.
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The study suggests an everyday person should be able to recognize the six prototypical emotions – happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust -in Nikola’s face.
The first step for researchers was to see if Nikola’s facial expressions were understandable.
However, there might be more to it. For example, a person who identifies each emotion quickly may be socially intuitive by jumping to decisions based on automatic cognitive processes.
Several tests done by the team showed that a person certified in Facial Action Coding System (FACS) scoring was able to identify each facial action unit.
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The person claimed that Nikola’s facial movements accurately resemble those of an actual human.
A second test showed that everyday people could recognize the six prototypical emotions in Nikola’s face. According to the researchers, Nikola’s silicone skin is less elastic than real human skin and cannot form wrinkles well.
Therefore, emotions like disgust were harder to identify because the action unit for nose wrinkling could not be included.
“In the short term, androids like Nikola can be important research tools for social psychology or even social neuroscience,” says RIKEN researcher Wataru Sato.
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“Compared with human confederates, androids are good at controlling behaviors and can facilitate rigorous empirical investigation of human social interactions.
“Androids that can emotionally communicate with us will be useful in a wide range of real-life situations, such as caring for older people, and can promote human wellbeing,” Sato added.
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