This paper proposes a method to shift an agent's personality during speech interaction to reduce users' negative impressions of speech recognition systems when speech recognition fails. Speech recognition failure makes users uncomfortable, and the cognitive strain in rephrasing commands is high. The proposed method aims to eliminate users' negative impression of agents by allowing an agent to have multiple personalities and accept responsibility for the failure, with the personality responsible for failure being removed from the task. System hardware remains the same, and users can continue to interact with another personality of the agent. Shifting the agent's personality is represented by a change in voice tone and LED color. Experimental results suggested that the proposed method reduces users' negative impressions by improving communication between users and the agent.

CPS (Cyber Physical System) includes a complicated architecture that spans cyber space and physical space. There are several relationships related to the transmission of data and energy and the control and monitoring of CPS components. Many control loops exist, and these control loops represent the cyclic relations of components based on the relationships mentioned above. Design faults in the control loops can cause accidents, and so we propose a method of verifying the stability of control loops to ensure safety in CPS. In the proposed method, control loops are identified in an architecture model proposed by us. An identified control loop is converted into a temporal logic formula, and the stability of a control loop is verified using a model checking tool. The effectiveness of the proposed method was confirmed by applying a farm monitoring system, which can be considered a type of actual CPS.

Artificial subtle expressions (ASEs) are machine-like expressions used to convey a system's confidence level to users intuitively. So far, auditory ASEs using beep sounds, visual ASEs using LEDs, and motion ASEs using robot movements have been implemented and shown to be effective. In this paper, we propose a novel type of ASE that uses vibration (vibrational ASEs). We implemented the vibrational ASEs on a smartphone and conducted experiments to confirm whether they can convey a system's confidence level to users in the same way as the other types of ASEs. The results clearly showed that vibrational ASEs were able to accurately and intuitively convey the designed confidence level to participants, demonstrating that ASEs can be applied in a variety of applications in real environments.

Artificial subtle expressions (ASEs) are machine-like expressions used to convey a system's confidence level to users intuitively. In this paper, we focus on the cognitive loads of users in interpreting ASEs in this study. Specifically, we assume that a shorter response time indicates less cognitive load, and we hypothesize that users will show a shorter response time when interpreting ASEs compared with speech sounds. We succeeded in verifying our hypothesis in a web-based investigation done to comprehend participants' cognitive loads by measuring their response times in interpreting ASEs and speeches.

Natural language user interfaces, such as Apple Siri and Google Voice Search have been embedded in consumer devices; however, speaking to objects can feel awkward. Use of these interfaces should feel natural, like speaking to a real listener. This paper proposes a method for manufactured objects such as anime figures to exhibit highly realistic behavioral expressions to improve speech interaction between a user and an object. Using a projection mapping technique, an anime figure provides back-channel feedback to a user by appearing to nod or shake its head. We developed a listener agent based on the anime figure that listens to a user give directions to a specific location. We performed experiments to investigate the users' impression of the speech interaction and compared it between four conditions. The experimental results suggested that the anime figure with projection mapping made the agent seem more realistic.

Natural language user interfaces, such as Apple Siri and Google Voice Search have been embedded in consumer devices; however, speaking to objects can feel awkward. Use of these interfaces should feel natural, like speaking to a real listener. This paper proposes a method for manufactured objects such as anime figures to exhibit highly realistic behavioral expressions to improve speech interaction between a user and an object. Using a projection mapping technique, an anime figure provides back-channel feedback to a user by appearing to nod or shake its head.

The first international workshop on mood engineering (IWME) is held in Tsukuba, Japan on October 28, 2014 and co-located with the second international conference on human-agent interaction (HAI). The main objective of the workshop is to create artificial moods by robot and agents and to clarify the mechanism of a mood created by a group including humans, robo ts, and agents. We have constructed an exciting program of demonstrations, posters, and video materials as interactive sessions that will provide participants creative a mood for collaborative research.

The impressions made by a blinking light used to create artificial subtle expressions (ASEs) and by a robot's appearance on users were investigated. The blinking light, which shows the user that the robot is performing speech recognition and thereby prevents utterance collisions, was separated from the robot by embedding it in a pedestal unit. In an evaluation experiment, participants performed five tasks with a spoken dialogue system coupled to a robot placed on the pedestal. The participants' impressions of the dialogue interactions and of the robot were obtained under four conditions (w/ light blinking or w/o blinking; humanoid or cuboid robot). The cuboid robot created a stronger impression of comfort and excitement for the interactions while the blinking light did not create a strong impression of anything. The robot's appearance and the blinking did not create a strong impression of anything for the robot. This suggests that the blinking light in the pedestal unit is a factor that is independent of robot appearance, meaning that the pedestal unit can be applied to robots with various appearances.

Users' impressions of blinking light expressions used as artificial subtle expressions have been investigated. In a preliminary experiment, thirteen blinking patterns were used for investigating participants' impressions of their agreeableness. The highest and lowest valued blinking patterns were identified and used for a speech interaction experiment. In this experiment, 52 participants tried to reserve hotel rooms with a spoken dialogue system coupled with an interface robot using a blinking light expression. A sine wave, a random wave, a rectangular wave, and a no-blinking condition were used as artificial subtle expressions to express a robot's internal state of “processing” or “recognizing”. The results of a questionnaire showed the conditions did not significantly differ in terms of agreeableness, but the sine wave and the rectangular wave were evaluated as “more useful” than the no-blinking condition. Results of factor analyses suggested that the rectangular wave provides a comfortable impression of the dialogue.

We describe artificial subtle expressions (ASEs) as intuitive notification methodology for artifacts' internal states for users. We prepared two types of audio ASEs; one was a flat artificial sound (flat ASE), and the other was a sound that decreased in pitch (decreasing ASE). These two ASEs were played after a robot made a suggestion to the users. Specifically, we expected that the decreasing ASE would inform users of the robot's lower level of confidence about the suggestions. We then conducted a simple experiment to observe whether the participants accepted or rejected the robot's suggestion in terms of the ASEs. The results showed that they accepted the robot's suggestion when the flat ASE was used, whereas they rejected it when the decreasing ASE was used. Therefore, we found that the ASEs succeeded in conveying the robot's internal state to the users accurately and intuitively.

This paper describes user studies on a novel remote control manipulatable with stroking its surface. There are lots of remote controls in our houses such as remote controls for TV, air conditioner, and so on. However, when we use a remote control, we need to look at both our fingers and an appliance that we would like to control. It may be not significantly problematic for young people, but elderly people have a difficulty in manipulating remote controls with many buttons. We consider it will be comfortable for various people to use a remote control without looking at their fingers and pushing buttons. We also consider a remote control should have robot-like appearance to become a more familiar artifact to users. In this study, we have proposed a robot-like remote control, Rebo, manipulatable only with stroking its surface and apply to an advanced TV system. The developed remote control has three advantages; familiarity, function awareness, and stroke manipulation, in contrast with conventional remote controls with many buttons. These advantages enable users to feel much familiarity by using it, to easily notice its implemented functions, and to use it without looking at the fingers and buttons. In this paper, we focus on experimental investigation for advantages of Rebo. We conducted experiments with participants and the experimental results supported such advantages.

We developed a practical field-based method of sensing the physiological status of live plants. The potential of detecting solar-induced plant fluorescence, which originates in chlorophyll molecules, through a non-destructive and remote sensing method was investigated. We constructed a plant fluorescence imaging system that adopted the Fraunhofer line discrimination (FLD) method in which the A-line (atmospheric oxygen absorption band of 760.78 nm) was used. The performance of the system was tested using three types of sampled leaves. Fluorescence intensities from their images produced with the system were highly correlated with fluorescence obtained from fluorospectrometer measurements (R2=3D0.95). We were able to produce fluorescence imaging of a redrobin living in field, including leaves, stems and branches. Fluorescence intensity varied with the chlorophyll content of each component.

This paper describes a new remote control operable with stroking its surface. There are lots of remote controls in our houses such as TV remote controls, air conditioner remote controls, and so on. However, when we use a remote control, we need to look at both the fingers and an appliance that we want to control. It is not highly problematic for young people, but elderly people have a difficulty in operating remote controls. It will be comfortable for people to use a remote control without looking at the fingers. In this study, we propose a remote control, Rebo, operable with stroking its surface and apply to a TV interaction system. The developed remote control has three advantages; (1) familiarity, (2) function awareness, and (3) stroke operation. Those enable users to have familiarity with it, to easily notice its functions, and to use it without looking at the fingers. The feature of Rebo in comparison with conventional button-based remote controls is the tolerance for mistakes because it enables unfamiliar users to home electric appliances to use it casually without fear of mistakes and unexpected behavior.

Speech overlaps, undesired collisions of utterances between systems and users, harm smooth communication and degrade the usability of systems. We propose a method to enable smooth speech interactions between a user and a robot, which enables subtle expressions by the robot in the form of a blinking LED attached to its chest. In concrete terms, we show that, by blinking an LED from the end of the user's speech until the robot's speech, the number of undesirable repetitions, which are responsible for speech overlaps, decreases, while that of desirable repetitions increases. In experiments, participants played a last-and-first game with the robot. The experimental results suggest that the blinking-light can prevent speech overlaps between a user and a robot, speed up dialogues, and improve user's impressions.

We propose a method to enable smooth speech interactions between a user and a robot. Our method is based on subtle expression whereby a robot blinks a small LED attached to its chest. We performed experiments in which participants played a last-and-first games and counted the number of repetitions made by the participants and analyzed their impression of the game and the robot. The experimental results suggested that the blinking-light could prevent utterance collisions between a user and a robot and could create familiar and attentive impressions about the game on users.

This paper focuses on the problem that will arise in the near future from multi-function robots. Users will have to read thick operation manuals to use them. If users can use these robots without reading difficult manuals, it will improve user efficiency. We then proposed action sloping as a way for users to naturally recognize a robot's function. It provides the robots with gradual feedback signals when the user performs given actions. By changing the intensity of the feedback signal according to his/her action, it encourages him/her to perform an action that will trigger the robot's function. In our experiments, we made three kinds of feedback behaviors according to Action Sloping and one non-feedback behavior as the control condition. The participants of the experiment tried to find a robot's function and the latencies to first finding the triggered action were measured. An analysis of the latencies show ed the difference between the sound feedback group by action sloping and the control group. This result showed that the effectiveness of action sloping was partially supported.

In this paper, we propose a novel interaction model for a human-robot cooperative task. The CEA (Commands Embedded in Actions) model reduces a human work-load because a user of a robot needs less inputs and outputs than DCM (Direct Commanding methods) like gesturing. We propose ECEA (Extended CEA) in order to deal with more complicated tasks than CEA. On the cooperative sweeping task between a human and a mobile robot, we apply temporal extension as one of ECEA instances. Multiple commands are embedded in the human action by the extension and the robot performs more complicated task. The experiments for conforming reduction of a human work-load using ECEA are conduced on the sweeping task. Human cognitive loads are measured as human workloads and compared between ECEA and DCM. The results of the experiments showed that the ECEA minimized a human cognitive load.