A Rendering Model for Emotional In-air Handwriting

According to graphology, people’s emotional states can be detected from their handwriting. The purpose of our research is to propose a 3D handwriting rendering model which has emotional capabilities. We developed an in-air handwriting system and selected eight emotions (afraid, angry, disgusted, happy, sad, surprised, amorous and serious) to be conveyed using five rendering parameters (weight, smoothness, tip of stroke, ink density and ink dryness). We then conducted an online survey to determine the optimal parameters’ values. A first result shows that there is a positive correlation between the Euclidean distance between two emotions on the valence-arousal emotion two-dimensional model and the distance between the calculated rendering parameters’ values. Another online survey then revealed that four of the emotions (afraid, sad, serious and angry) are well conveyed. The results are less conclusive for the other four emotions, but further work is being conducted to improve the model when the handwriting is shown in conjunction with the other emotional channels of a social robot.