AI-Powered Emotional Intelligence in Social Robots: Towards Empathetic Human–Robot Interaction

Abstract

Incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) into social robots has introduced a novel stage in the relationship between humans and robots, and it focuses on emotional intelligence to help have an empathetic interaction. Emotional intelligence through AI is expected to make robots identify, understand and act on human emotions to build trust, collaboration, and socially adaptive behaviour. Affectively computational social robots make use of multimodal inputs, i.e., facial expressions, speech intonation, gestures, and physiological information to simulate human emotional states in real-time. This essay examines the design concepts, computational theories and uses of emotionally intelligent social robots. These robots are able to modify behavior, communication style and decision using machine learning, natural language processing and cognitive modeling to match human affective cues. The paper explores the architecture of the systems, integration of sensors, algorithms, and ethical issues regarding empathetic interaction. The experimental assessment of AI-based emotional intelligence in healthcare, education, and customer service settings show that this approach has the potential to improve interaction, interpersonal relationship, and task care. The results highlight the revolutionizing potential of the emotively conscious AI in developing social robots that can communicate meaningfully with human beings, find a medium of interaction between computational thinking, and responsiveness through affective response in practice.