Digital Emotion : How Audiences React to Robots on Screen

The experience of interacting with robots is becoming a more pervasive part of our day-to-day life. When considering the experience of interacting with other technologies and artefacts, interaction with robots presents a distinct and potentially unique component: physical connection. Robots share our physical space; this is a prominent part of the interaction experience. Robots offer a lifelike presence and the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) issues go beyond the traditional interactions of more passive technologies and artefacts. The attention paid to HRI has grown dramatically as robotic systems have become more capable and as human contact with those systems has become more commonplace [1]. Immediately recognizable, culturally ubiquitous, androids, cyborgs, and robots, need no introduction. Yet their very familiarity obscures their participation in culture and media, and our perennial fascination with such artificial humans when seen on the screen. While robots are growing more capable of many tasks, people are often hesitant at introducing technology into older, more traditional art forms. However, robots of varying kinds are appearing with increasing frequency in all manner of cinematic productions [2]. Robots and artificial humans have been a staple of our sci-fi screen experiences, however, unlike previous technology such as smartphones or laptops, robots are currently being given more character roles in films. Therefore, like animated characters, audiences are beginning to anthropomorphize and have emotional experiences with the robot characters. This paper attempts to unpack how humans see these artificial humans and how we interpret their representation in cinema through a discussion of the use of ‘physical’ robots as a natural next stage of cinema performance and drama. The paper presents and experiment involving cyborg performances in a series of short films. In this study, participants attended a screening where they viewed these films, and their responses to, and feelings about, the films were measured. It was hypothesized that film audiences have become comfortable with seeing robots in sci-fi films over the years. Therefore, it is expected that current and future audiences will begin to give these robot characters human attributes such as gender.