How Haptics Affects Emotions in Robotic Dancing Performance.

Abstract

Dance and movement-based artistic practices are a powerful nonverbal channel for emotional communication. The integration of robotic systems into these expressive contexts enables novel forms of performative art, while simultaneously raising concerns regarding the fidelity and perceptual accuracy of conveyed emotional information, particularly when affective content is mediated through non-humanoid embodiments. This study addresses a key limitation of robotic dance previously identified: although emotional valence and stylistic coherence were largely preserved, the resulting robotic performances exhibited diminished clarity in the perception of emotional arousal. To overcome this limitation, we investigate the role of haptic feedback as an additional expressive modality to support emotional communication in robotic dance. Visual performances by both human and robotic dancers are augmented with thermal and vibrotactile cues designed in accordance with established associations between haptic stimuli and emotional dimensions. A user study was conducted to assess how this multimodal augmentation influences the perception of emotional arousal. Results demonstrate that the inclusion of thermal or vibro-thermal haptic stimuli significantly enhances the interpretability of emotional content conveyed by a dancing robot. In particular, haptic augmentation of the audience experience improves the distinguishability of emotion intensity without altering the transmission of hedonic tone.