Cognitive Performance and Physiological Response Analysis

For more socially natural interactions between robots and humans there is a need for the robots to detect and understand the current internal state of the individuals they interact with. In this paper, we investigate the impact of personality, user sensory profile, and morningness–eveningness type of an individual on the variation of different physiological parameters (i.e., blinking, galvanic skin response, facial temperature variation), as well as the performance in a non-verbal word-color Stroop task. The TIAGo humanoid robot displayed two interaction styles that are based on visual and auditory stimuli. The visual and auditory stimuli used by the robot are in accordance with the user sensory profile. We report the results of a within participants study carried out with 24 participants. Our results show that personality, user sensory profile, and morningness–eveningness type have an impact on the variation of the chosen physiological parameters. Furthermore, the interaction style of the robot has an influence on the variation of the physiological parameters.