Intimacy Equilibrium Model focusing on whole-body behaviors for sustainable relationships between robots and humans

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26705008
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Social psychology
• Research Institution: Nagoya University (2016); Tohoku University (2015); Osaka University (2014)
• Principal Investigator: Kamide Hiroko 名古屋大学, 未来社会創造機構, 准教授 (90585960)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: ヒューマン・ロボット・インタラクション / 非言語行動

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The aim was to develop a model that predicts nonverbal behaviors that are implicit but specific to strangers and friends and to test the expressiveness of different levels of closeness using a robot. An experiment was conducted in which 48 pairs of participants had casual conversations about recent events for 10 min. Their body movements were recorded by a motion-capture system, and vectors were defined on the upper body to compute the cosine similarity for each frame in order to extract the motions. The motions specific to strangers and friends were identified and two scenarios were created using those motions. The scenarios were implemented using 3D agents of a female human and a humanoid robot, and also a real humanoid. Respondents were asked to evaluate the closeness that the agent seemed to express toward the counterpart. The results showed that agents and a robot performing friend motions were evaluated higher in expressiveness closeness than non-friend motions.

Free Research Field

ヒューマン・ロボット・インタラクション