@conference {2186, title = {An Experimental Eye-Tracking Study for the Design of a Context-Dependent Social Robot Blinking Model}, booktitle = {Living Machines 2014}, year = {2014}, pages = {356-366}, publisher = {Springer-Verlag}, organization = {Springer-Verlag}, address = {Milan, Italy, July 30 {\textendash} August 1}, abstract = {

uman gaze and blinking behaviours have been recently considered, to empower humanlike robots to convey a realistic behaviour in a social human-robot interaction. This paper reports the findings of our investigation on human eye-blinking behaviour in relation to human gaze behaviour, in a human-human interaction. These findings then can be used to design a humanlike eye-blinking model for a social humanlike robot. In an experimental eye-tracking study, we showed to 11 participants, a 7-minute video of social interactions of two people, and collected their eye-blinking and gaze behaviours with an eye-tracker. Analysing the collected data, we measured information such as participants{\textquoteright} blinking rate, maximum and minimum blinking duration, number of frequent (multiple) blinking, as well as the participants{\textquoteright} gaze directions on environment. The results revealed that participants{\textquoteright} blinking rate in a social interaction are qualitatively correlated to the gaze behaviour, as higher number of gaze shift increased the blinking rate. Based on the findings of this study, we can propose a context-dependent blinking model as an important component of the robot{\textquoteright}s gaze control system that can empower our robot to mimic human blinking behaviour in a multiparty social interaction.

}, keywords = {Robotics}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-09435-9_31}, url = {http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-09435-9_31}, author = {A. Zaraki and Dehkordi, M. B. and D. Mazzei and D. De Rossi} }