Emotions on Cartoon Faces - Do Japanese and Hungarian Perseive then Differently?

Osaka Institute of Technology (Prof. Tomoko Koda) – MOME (Ruttkay Zsófia) projekt 2009-2011

Nowadays on displays of computer or mobil phones we  often come across talking and gesturing virtual characters, who must be ableo also to show emotions via their facial expressions. In this research we set out to explore if Japanese and Hungarian interpret certain facialexpression in a similar or different way. In the bilateral research Japanese and Hungarian students create faces with sad and happy expressions, which will be tested among both nations. The first experiments suggest that the Japanese pay more attention to the eye region, while the Hungarian to the mouth region, in attirbution an emotion to the facial expression.

Activities:

2009 Fall:           online experiments with faces designed in Japan
2010 March:       Prof. Tomoko Koda visiting CTL at MOME
2010 Spring:       MOME students prepare the Hungarian faces with teh CharToon software
2010 Fall:           evaluation of the Hungarian faces

2011 Spring:      publication of the results

Publications:

1. T. Koda, Y. Nakagawa, K. Tabuchi, Zs. Ruttkay: From Cartoons to Robots: Facial Regions as Cues to Recognize Emotions, HRI2010, 5th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, March 2-5 2010, Osaka

2. T. Koda T. Sano, Z. Ruttkay: From Cartoons to Robots Part 2: Facial Regions as Cues to Recognize Emotions, Human-Robot Interaction (HRI2011), Lausanne, March 2011