Emotional Gripping Expression of a Robotic Hand as Physical Contact

This research aims at the emotional expression of a robotic hand through various gripping manners on the user's hand. The proposed system is implemented with a robotic hand's various haptic actuators to realize the change of the fingers' gripping force and the robotic hand's holding duration so that the user can haptically estimate the emotion of the robot. The system is expected to provide stress relief or emotional stability, especially for elderly or challenged people. Our experiments showed that the stronger gripping force was perceived as more hypersensitive and higher affinity and that a longer grasping time increased the higher affinity.