Improving motor performance is essential for sustaining long-term sports participation. In this study, we proposed a novel observational learning scheme for full-body sports movements, aiming to enhance its effectiveness by inducing a kinesthetic illusion. To implement this scheme, we developed a virtual reality (VR) system which can apply synchronized visuo-motor and visuo-tactile stimuli. In an experiment, participants who experienced the proposed scheme reported significantly higher perceived synchrony and subjectively rated their ball trajectory accuracy as improved after they performed actual golf driver swings. These findings suggest that our proposed observational learning scheme has the potential to support performance improvement in full-body sports movements.

More and more robots are providing services that involve conversations with people in daily life. Among them, the movement and positioning of the robot are effective factors to improve the robot’s expression, and the distance from the human and the direction of the robot are reported as important parameters. In multi-person dialogues, it is expected that robots can communicate their impressions, emotions, and thoughts to other robots by successfully adjusting their movement and positioning. We investigated the effect of the robot’s movement in a conversation on the subsequent conversation and the expression of the moving robot. It was found that there were intentions and emotions of the robot that could be expressed by moving forward and backward, respectively. The next step of this experiment is to conduct interaction between subjects using a system that incorporates forward and backward movements.

People with response time (RT) management issues usually have high situational communication apprehension, and fear of negative evaluation (FNE) in face-to-face (FtF) and online interactions. Decreasing the stress related to RT management can reduce situational communication apprehension and FNE, ensuring communication successful. In this study, we propose an interactive response strategy involving a robot avatar in a video conference that can reduce the stress related to RT management in a person and making communication successful. Two types of robotic video conferencing systems (VCSs) were considered: 1) a conventional robotic video conferencing system (VCS) where interactive response of robot avatar does not change concerning variation in RT of the subject and 2) a robotic VCS where interactive response of robot avatar changes concerning variation in RT of the subject. Situational communication apprehension measure (SCAM), FNE, sense of being attending (SoBA), and intention to use (ITU) are used as indexes for noticing the decrease in stress related to RT management of a subject in a communication scenario. A total of 51 subjects (M = 33.20, SD = 7.58 years) participated in the subjective evaluation of the web-based survey. The proposed interactive response of a robot avatar was found to have a significant effect on the stress related to RT management in a person. A significant decrease in expected SCAM and FNE scores of subjects was observed. Furthermore, a significant increase in expected SoBA and ITU scores of subjects was also observed. This study contributes to the literature in terms of the impact of the proposed interactive response of the robotic avatar on the stress related to RT management in a person in the video conference, assessed by SCAM, FNE, SoBA, and ITU indexes.