Emotion Communication via Copying Behaviour: A Case Study with the Greta Embodied Agent

This paper investigates emotion communication via copying behaviour in an embodied virtual agent. Copying takes place at the expressive level, where motion qualities are considered, rather than exact low-level motion matching. We present an experiment that investigates (1) the extent to which people can recognise the emotion expressed by the agent’s copying behaviour, and (2) whether and how the type of gesture performed by the agent affects the perception of emotion. Results suggest that a combination of type of movement performed and its quality are important for successfully communicating emotions.