Drones can elicit emotions from people, which could help integrate them into society more easily Joy, sadness, fear, anger, and surprise were the easiest to recognize. A A Reset Could we learn to love a robot? Maybe. New research suggests that drones, at least, could elicit an emotional response in people if we put cute little faces on them. A set of rendered faces representing six basic emotions in three different intensity levels that were used in the study. Image credits Viviane Herdel. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have examined how people react to a wide range of facial expressions depicted on a drone. The study aims to deepen our understanding of how flying drones might one day integrate into society, and how human-robot interactions, in general, can be made to feel more natural — an area of research that hasn’t been explored very much until today.