This study aimed to clarify the influence of not only biological sex, but also gender-stereotypical identity, on feelings toward robots. An online survey (N = 500) was conducted to explore differences depending on the type of robots. This survey measured expectations of rapport and interactions with, as well as anxiety toward, male and female androids and mechanical humanoid robots. The results suggested persons having classical masculine-stereotypical identity tended to feel less anxious toward female androids and mechanical humanoids, and persons having classical feminine-stereotypical identity strongly expect rapport with these robots, and there were differences on types of anxiety and rapport expectation dependent on biological sex.

As a preliminary attempt to explore the influences of sexual orientation and gender identity on feelings and behavior toward robots, we conducted an online survey on 500 randomly selected Japanese monitors (age range, 20s to 60s) based on two psychological scales measuring negative attitudes toward robots and gender role identity. The results suggested that gender role identity, particularly perceived femininity, could affect attitudes toward robots more strongly than or have an interaction effect with biological sex.

For the aim at exploring factors determining negative attitudes toward robots, the study conducted an online questionnaire survey for a total of five hundreds of persons varying from 20’s to 60’s. The measurements consisted of the Japanese version of the Negative Attitudes toward Robots Scale, Critical Thinking Attitude Scale, and questionnaire items related to conservative attitudes and tendencies of preserving the status quo. The analysis results suggested that critical thinking attitudes, conservative attitudes, and tendencies of preserving the status quo affected negative attitudes toward robots, and this affection differed dependent on gender.

To investigate influences of media literacy into experiences of and negative attitudes toward robots, an online survey was conducted in Japan (N = 500). The results suggested that the connections of robot experiences with media literacy and negative attitudes toward robots were weak, and both media literacy and robot experiences had negative effects on negative attitudes toward interaction with robots.

We developed a self-report measurement, Moral Concern for Robots Scale (MCRS), which measures whether people believe that a robot has moral standing, deserves moral care, and merits protection. The results of an online survey ( \pmbN = 200) confirmed the concurrent validity and predictive validity of the scale in the sense that the scale scores are successfully used to predict people's intentions for prosocial behaviors.

A series of studies were conducted as an exploratory survey to examine the possible roles of a robot as a partner in healthcare. The results show that Japanese people are willing to use a humanoid robot as an exercise partner in a variety of usage scenarios. In particular, a walking robot was found to be useful for socially anxious individuals, in that it can serve as a safe partner that is not evaluates them.

To explore basic images of robots in adolescents, a survey was conducted for ninety-seven Japanese students in the first-year at a university in Japan. In the survey, the participants were asked to draw pictures of entities that they first imaged when they heard the word "robots". The results of classification of these drawings suggested that there was not variety of basic robot images in the participants of the survey.

The paper summarizes the results of the questionnaire surveys conducted by the author's research group, along 1) attitudes toward robots, 2) assumptions and images about robots, 3) anxiety and expectation toward humanoid robots based on the concept of “Frankenstein Syndrome”, and 4) ethical problems related to robots. Then, the paper discusses about the future direction of the research on cultural differences on social acceptance of robots.

An online survey for 1,200 Japanese participants from 20's to 50's was conducted to clarify what type of robot and under what situation humans expect rapport with, and explore human factors influential into these expectations. The survey was based on hypothetical situation method consisting of three situations: a vacuum robot, a pet-type robot, and a robot instructor. The results suggested that; 1) expectations of rapport with robots were dependent on types of robots and application contexts, and were directly not affected by experiences of robots; 2) these expectations were influenced by negative attitudes toward social influences of and emotional interaction with robots, and emotional sensitivity for others; 3) expectations of rapport with robots were influenced by different psychological factors dependent on robot types and application contexts.

No abstract available.

In order to investigate what type of experiences of robots influences negative attitudes toward them, an online survey (N = 1,200) was conducted in Japan, by using the Negative Attitudes toward Robots Scale (NARS). The results suggested that (1) there were almost no strong relationships between types of robot experiences and gender, and age, (2) the correlations between negative attitudes toward robots and age were low, (3) experiences of robots in real situations decreased negative attitudes toward interaction with and social influences of robots in comparison with experiences via media, and (4) negative attitudes toward emotional interaction with robots were not affected by these experiences.

To investigate the effects of robots on human self-assessment under the more general contexts of learning, this research focused on the evaluative feedback by robots. A psychological experiment was conducted by using a human-sized humanoid robot. The results found that the evaluative context tended to increase the subjects' negative responses regarding disclosure of their skills to the robot and the robot evaluating the skills, and the internal locus of control and the fear of negative evaluation positively influenced the subjects' responses to disclosing their skills to the robot. This paper discusses the implications on the use of robots in self-monitoring for healthcare and education.

On considering symbiosis of humans and robots, its benefits and risks should be taken into account for persons in weaker positions of the society, in particular, children. On the other hand, several robotics applications have been developed, including education and welfare for children. In this stage, it is important that more researchers from interdisciplinary research fields, including robotics, computer science, psychology, sociology, and pedagogy, share an opportunity to discuss about the potential of "robots with children". This half-day workshop aims at providing with the forum where researchers from these interdisciplinary fields discuss about how symbiosis of robots and children should and can be realized, from the perspectives of engineering, psychology, education, and welfare.

No abstract available.

On the current situation where robots having functions of communication with humans begin to appear in daily-life fields, it should be considered how symbiosis of humans and robots can be achieved. Many existing studies have focused on how robots can learn from and adapt for humans. This full-day workshop focuses not only on this classical theme but also on how humans can learn in and adapt for environments where robots are acting. In particular, human learning from and adaptation for robots should be covered by interdisciplinary research fields including robotics, computer science, psychology, sociology, and pedagogy.

To investigate influences of inconsistency on forms of information presentation by robots, a psychological experiment was conducted in Japan, with between-subject design for forty five university students. In the experiment, a small-sized humanoid robot performed self-introduction with polite/impolite postures and polite/impolite phrases in the utterances, in the Japanese cultural sense. The results revealed that: 1) the subjects under the inconsistent conditions (polite posture - impolite phrase condition or impolite posture - polite phrase condition) recalled less on the contents uttered by the robot than did those under the consistent conditions (polite posture - polite phrase condition or impolite posture - impolite phrase condition), and 2) there was only a low level of correlations between the recall scores of uttered contents and impressions of the robot. The paper discusses about implications from the results for future robotics design.

No abstract available.

The research discusses the meaning that communication robots have in the context of mental therapy. This theoretical discussion is undertaken from a psychological and sociological perspective. It investigates what happens when robots are introduced into current social situations. It focuses on applications of robots that substitute as autonomous artifacts behaving like humans for human therapists.

Body motion expression is one of the useful methods that robots present their emotional states toward users. Since emotions themselves have cultural dependency, however, it is estimated that effects of affective body motions depend on users' demographic factors such as gender and age. In order to clarify this dependence, a psychological experiment was conducted to investigate age differences on evaluation of affective body motions which were implemented into a small-sized humanoid robot. The results showed differences between younger and elder people on identification of emotions, body parts paid attention to, and impression of motion speed and magnitude for the affective body motions of the robot. The paper also discusses about the implications.

In the recent situation that robotics is expected for education of technologies and sciences in Japan, it is important to consider what psychological states should be achieved in students, and understand how far the current states are from the states to be achieved, especially from the perspective of ldquomaking-artifactsrdquo in the sense of manufacturing industries. This paper reports some case studies to explore psychological relationships between robots, ldquomaking-artifacts,rdquo computers, and mathematics in younger ages. Then, the paper discusses implications on the practices of robotics in education of technologies and sciences.

When people interact with communication robots in daily life, their attitudes and emotions toward the robots affect their behavior. From the perspective of robotics design, we need to investigate the influences of these attitudes and emotions on human-robot interaction. This paper reports our empirical study on the relationships between people's attitudes and emotions, and their behavior toward a robot. In particular, we focused on negative attitudes, anxiety, and communication avoidance behavior, which have important implications for robotics design. For this purpose, we used two psychological scales that we had developed: negative attitudes toward robots scale (NARS) and robot anxiety scale (RAS). In the experiment, subjects and a humanoid robot are engaged in simple interactions including scenes of meeting, greeting, self-disclosure, and physical contact. Experimental results indicated that there is a relationship between negative attitudes and emotions, and communication avoidance behavior. A gender effect was also suggested.

This paper reports a study that estimated visitor positions, visiting patterns, and inter-human relationships at a science museum using information from RFID readers. In the science museum, we exhibited humanoid robots. Visitors were invited to wear RFID tags to interact with the robots. Visitor behavior was simultaneously observed using 20 RFID readers, distributed throughout the entire floor, that roughly measured the distances of nearby tags. We integrated the outputs from all RFID readers to estimate visitor trajectories that were used to analyze three perspectives: space, visiting patterns, and relationships. Regarding space, we identified crowded and uncrowded areas. We found several typical visiting patterns, such as visited at every exhibit and directly going to robot area. We also identified atypical visiting behavior. Regarding relationships, for example, we estimated 68% coverage of group-member relationships with 91% reliability.

Humanoids are the most advanced robots and have been expected to act in various fields including education. Thus, it is important to investigate in different cultures what people actually assume when they encounter the word "humanoid robots," from not only a psychological perspective but also an engineering one, focusing on such aspects as design and market of robotics. For this aim, a cross-cultural research instrument, the robot assumptions questionnaire (RAQ) was administered to university students in Japan, Korea, and the USA. As a result, it was found that the Japanese students more strongly assume autonomy, social relationships, and emotional capacity of humanoid robots than the Korean and USA students, and there are more detailed cultural differences of assumptions about humanoids related to daily-life fields, in particular, pedagogical fields. Moreover, it was found that the USA students have more ambivalent images of humanoids than the Japanese students, and the Korean students have more careful attitudes toward humanoid robots than the Japanese students. In addition, the paper discusses engineering implications of the research results.

To study the short-term and long-term influence of communication robots in daily life applications, it is necessary to develop psychological scales for measuring the mental states of users of robots and analyzing related social trends. In particular, to explore the more internal factors related to communication robots, it is necessary to focus on anxiety. This paper reports the results of developing the Robot Anxiety Scale (RAS) for measuring the anxiety that prevents individuals from interaction with robots having functions of communication in daily life. In particular, we focus on communication in a human-robot dyad

This paper concerns recombinations which produce offspring from two parents. We assume an infinite population and regard recombinations as transformations of stochastic variables represented as chromosomes. We then formalize recombinations with the probability density functions of stochastic variables represented as the parameters and describe the change of the probability density functions of chromosomes before and after recombination. Our formalization includes various proposed recombinations, such as multi-point, uniform, and linear crossover, as well as BLX-alpha. We also derive certain properties of the operators, such as diversification and decorrelation.

Some fuzzy expert systems have used fuzzy rules with numerical values which represent degrees of confidence for rules. We discuss two kinds of interpretations for these numerical degrees of confidence for rules, called "direct degrees" and "indirect degrees". Then, we apply Zadeh's, Baldwin's, and Tsukamoto's reasoning method to the rules under the two interpretations using general T-norms, and verify their properties. Moreover, in cases where fuzzy sets in descendant parts of rules are defined on a finite set, we present conditions for equivalence between rules with numerical degrees of confidence where descendant parts are singleton form and conventional rules, under usage of *-max or *-sum composition for conclusions of reasoning.