This paper describes the implementation in a walking humanoid robot of a mental model, allowing the dynamical change of the emotional state of the robot based on external stimuli; the emotional state affects the robot decisions and behavior, and it is expressed with both facial and whole-body patterns. The mental model is applied to KOBIAN-R, a 65-DoFs whole body humanoid robot designed for human-robot interaction and emotion expression. To evaluate the importance of the proposed system in the framework of human-robot interaction and communication, we conducted a survey by showing videos of the robot behaviors to a group of 30 subjects. The results show that the integration of dynamical emotion expression and locomotion makes the humanoid robot more appealing to humans, as it is perceived as more “favorable” and “useful”, and less “robot-like.”
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