Emotional Human – Robot Interactions (EMAI4EU)

The course focuses on various topics around Human - Robot Interactions, with a special attention to emotions. The study material briefly introduces topics regarding: Human-Robot Interactions (HRI), and what role emotions take in it. 

It covers ideas, such as: What is HRI and why it is a thing? What are the main methods and models to measure human emotions or affects? What is a robot and what kinds of robots existing? How can a robot understand human emotions? How can a robot convey emotional signals to humans via sound, body language, or vision? What role trust and empathy take in an interaction? What can we say regarding the ethical concerns? 

About this course 

As intelligent machines step into shared physical spaces, bridging human emotional nuance with embodied artificial intelligence is vital for designing trustworthy, collaborative companions. This online course introduces the core principles, cognitive models, and behavioural design methodologies of Emotional Human-Robot Interaction (eHRI). 

The curriculum examines how robotic systems detect and interpret affective cues - including facial expressions, vocal prosody, kinesics, and physical proxemics - and translate them into socially coherent actions. Beyond passive sensing, students will explore how robots actively synthesize emotion through expressive motion, synthetic speech, and adaptive social cues across healthcare, therapy, eldercare, hospitality, and education. Through structured study materials, participants will develop a grounded understanding of affective robotics architectures while evaluating the critical psychological boundaries, transparency requirements, and ethical frameworks essential for responsible social robot deployment.

Course structure 

• Understand the fundamental concepts regarding Human – Robot Interactions including the main application areas.

• Examine the different possibilities and trade-off in robotic design for Human – Robot Interactions.

• Explores the different possibilities of a robotics emotional understanding, and expression as functional parts of an interaction.

• Compare and analyse the different modalities to use from the robotic partner in a real-world scenario.

• Evaluate the legal and ethical considerations surrounding privacy, consent, and responsible design in emotion displaying robotic systems.

Learning outcomes 

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Understand the foundational theories, main methodologies, and cross-industry applications of emotional Human – Robot Interactions.
• Use basic design principles for displaying emotions in a functional fashion for robotics systems.
• Critically analyse the displaying modalities of robotics systems.
• Assess and apply legal, ethical, and privacy standards to ensure responsible design and deployment of emotion displaying robotic technologies.

Further information 

This course is designed as part of the EU-backed EMAI4EU project. EMotion Artificial Intelligence specialists for EUrope (EMAI4EU) aims to contribute to training the next generation of specialists in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Europe, and in particular specialists in Emotion AI, one of the most promising subsets of Artificial Intelligence. The project is funded with the support of the Digital Europe Programme of the European Union.