Modelling the human blink: a computational model for use within human-robot interaction

C. C. Ford, G. Bugmann, P. Culverhouse

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper describes findings from a Human-to-Human Interaction experiment that examines human communicative non-verbal facial behaviour. The aim was to develop a more comfortable and e®ective model of social human-robot communication. Analysis of the data revealed a strong co-occurrence between human blink production and non-verbal communicative behaviours of own speech instigation and completion, interlocutor speech instigation, looking at/away from the interlocutor, facial expression instigation and completion, and mental communicative state changes. Seventy-one percent of the total 2007 analysed blinks co-occurred with these behaviours within a time window of +/ 375 ms, well beyond their chance co-occurrence probability of 23%. Thus between 48% and 71% of blinks are directly related to human communicative behaviour and are not simply \physiological" (e.g., for cleaning/humidifying the eye). Female participants are found to blink twice as often as male participants, in the same communicative scenario, and have a longer average blink duration. These results provide the basis for the implementation of a blink generation system as part of a social cognitive robot for human-robot interaction.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-31
Number of pages31
JournalInternational Journal of Humanoid Robotics
Volume10
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Apr 2013

Keywords

  • Social Robotics
  • Human-Robot Interaction
  • Human Blink
  • Human Communication
  • Mental Communicative States
  • Computational Modelling
  • Non-Verbal Behaviour
  • Blink Model

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