How Facial Expressions Help Robots Communicate with Us | Nat Geo Explores

[Narrator] There are a lot of us, all with different cultures, languages, beliefs. So, yeah. Communication. It's not always easy.

You're crazy.

You're crazy.

You're crazy. (slapping)

[Narrator] But no matter where we come from or the languages we speak, by using these, we can still connect with other humans. And now maybe with them too.

There are so many purposes of facial expressions. I'm David Matsumoto. I'm a Professor of Psychology at San Francisco State University, and I'm also the director of Humintell. The face is one of the most complex signal systems we have in the body. And it serves many purposes. For example, when we wrinkle our nose in disgust like this, not only is it communicating something to you, who can perceive my expression, what it's also doing is clamping down a little bit on those nasal passages. It's preventing things from coming into my body through my nasal passage.

[Narrator] Facial expressions also communicate to the people around us. One of the biggest advocates for this theory was Charles Darwin.

[David] Darwin posited that all humans have emotions. It allows us to act immediately with minimal conscious thinking or awareness. And then on top of that, we add these expressions so that we could communicate that reaction to others as well, and that helped the group to survive.

[Narrator] Because of this, Darwin believed our expressions were universal.

So in psychology today, there is widespread agreement that seven facial expressions of emotion are universally recognized all around the world, regardless of race, color, creed, nationality, gender, or any demographic that exists. They are anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. (dramatic music)

[Narrator] So this means as humans, we can talk to each other, even without words. (dramatic music) But can facial expressions help us connect with human-like technology?

So the robot is a way to understand human self, for me. By creating a very human-like robot, I believe that we can get some knowledge about humans. My name is Hiroshi Ishiguro. I'm a roboticist. What I could learn through the robots: so many things, right? We are trying to develop interacting robots with humans. (dramatic music) And we're studying how humans can interact with robots. So in order to develop that kind of a robot, the first facial expressions and the gazing directions, gazing control of the robot is very important. So the robot needs to represent emotions and intelligence in many ways. We have totally different cultures between the United States and Japan, but I know that we understand emotional expression. There is no doubt emotional facial expressions are a very important way of communication. So, therefore, the facial expression is very important for androids and for having communication with humans.

[Robot] Hello, My name is Erica.

[Robot] Meet Erica.

I think Erica is the most human-like android in the world. Erica can have a kind of a natural conversation with the visitors. Maybe for five or ten minutes. We are implementing the major facial expressions with Erica. Happy,

It's all very exciting.

Angry.

I'm done talking to you, please don't come speak with me again.

And it's sad and depressed. (foreign language)

So androids can have their communications by exchanging facial expressions, even if they don't understand the language.

There are so many great applications for these robots. Whether it's helping the elderly, guiding tourists, or even for entertainment. It's all very exciting. Oh, sorry about that. I got a little carried away.

[Narrator] By designing robots to have facial expressions, humans could more easily connect with them and incorporate them into our lives.

It's just really interesting because we use our faces to reference many different mental states.

By expressing facial expressions, even if we don't understand our language to each other, we can share some information.

And because of that, facial expressions of emotion are the closest thing we have to a universal language. They allow us to share emotions with each other. They allow us to share the time when we laugh together or cry together. If there's anything out there, they're the single most important vehicle that we have that can bring us all together. (upbeat music)