Staging Emotions: a Transdisciplinary Consideration of Human-Robot Interaction

This paper presents the contributions of the scholars who took part in the panel Dire e agire l’emozione: sulle scene dell’interazione uomo-robot held at the international conference Dire et chanter les passions: les voix de l’émotion (Angers, 18th-19th October 2019). The panel aimed at investigating the forms and voices of the interaction – physical, emotional, affective – between man and robot by measuring the empathic components that result from it and verifying the possibility of understanding human behaviour starting from the reactions arising from contact with its artificial cohabitants. In the opening, the contribution of Salvatore Anzalone, Social robots as tools to understand humans’ social mind, following the most advanced studies in the field of human-machine interaction, allows us to have an overview of the various types of robots and the different areas in which robotics is used today. The two following sections are instead a deepening in the multidisciplinary research project born within the University of Bologna Performing Robots. The paragraph Motions of wonder and emotion for the artifice on stage: first notes from the Performing robots project, with a look at Japan by Matteo Casari, starts from the first public working session of the research group staged in April 2019: A dance for Lucy. Starting from this topic will be presented a short excursus on traditional Japanese theatre and the influence of automata (karakuri ningyō) and puppet theatre on human actors. About how the audience reacted to the dance performed by Lucy focuses on Cristiana Natali's intervention Between relief and empathy: the emotions of the audience at the presentation of a performing robot. The audience's perception of the performance was investigated through semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The final paragraph, The voice of human emotions in the robot theatre of Hirata Oriza and Ishiguro Hiroshi by Cinzia Toscano, focuses on the performance Sayonara in which the voice is an essential element in the performative construction of the identity of the robot android Geminoid F.