Inspired by an animal behavior called bunting, in which the animal rubs its head against other objects, including humans, we developed robotic prototypes capable of performing such bunting behaviors. Since physical contact plays an important role in therapeutic interactions between pets and their owners, we hypothesize that robot bunting can have a similar effect on its user. This article reports on the development of such a robot with a flexible neck that can change its stiffness while the robot is rubbing its head against the user. An exploratory study was also conducted with 22 human participants, on whom the developed robot performed head bunting with three different (low/high/variable) stiffness conditions. The results show that the participants’ psychological tension, as measured by the temporary mood scale (TMS), was significantly reduced (p \(\lt\) 0.001) after interacting with the robot. The difference between the three stiffness conditions was not significant in this study. Due to the lack of a control condition, we cannot confirm a clear effect of the stiffness change; however, some participants commented that the stiffness change made the robot's behavior lifelike and relaxing.

Cyberbullying on social networking sites can cause harm by increasing the likelihood of suicidal thoughts and attempts and should be controlled. To control cyberbullying in the long term, it is necessary to change the attitudes and behaviors of individuals who engage in harmful communication. In the current study, we focused on positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), which are related to attitudes and behaviors. We developed two SNS applications (X-type and VRChat-type) that incorporate nudge using Multilingual Translation (NMT), which translates cyberbullying words into positive words in other languages. The process also exposes users to positive reactions from imaginary third parties who have seen these positive words. In this paper, we describe the development of two types of SNS applications and report the initial results of a pilot study to explore their potential utility.

A plug-in weight-shifting module that can be inserted into a variety of objects is presented. The module is equipped with a movable weight inside its body. Three-dimensional weight shifts are presented by controlling one-dimensional translational and two-dimensional rotational movements. To explore the use case of this weight-shifting module, eight weight shift patterns expressing certain emotions were created through a workshop and a qualitative analysis. User tests, to which three different embodiments and scenarios were applied, examined the following three cases: the weight shift patterns were presented to the user by a) a stuffed toy-style robot that mediated human messaging, b) a cushion that made the user relax, and c) a container that enhanced the user's movie-watching experience. User interviews revealed the feasibility of the module and its weight shift patterns for the user's perception of emotions.

Interpersonal conflicts are often more difficult to mediate when communicating remotely. The lack of social cues and external mediation makes it difficult for positive conflict behaviors to occur. To this end, robots have been shown to have the potential as mediators. In this paper, we attempt to discuss how to design appropriate bodily contact interactions for the different roles of a robot mediator so as to facilitate the effectiveness of its mediation. We first conduct a pilot interview to probe the potential roles and design elements of robot contact in this study. Then, we explore the relationship between these roles and design elements through a 16-participant design workshop. Finally, we analyze these findings and propose design suggestions for future robot mediator design.

It is estimated that 3.5-10 percent of the population are afraid of injections. These people are at risk of vasovagal syncope, a condition in which the patient faints during the injection. To help overcome this response to the perceived pain of injections, this paper proposes a diffuse noxious inhibitory control effect that can be applied through Augmented Reality (AR) smartphone applications. Furthermore, we confirm that presenting ARs that evoke noxious stimulation in participants can influence pain perception. We investigate the pain perception and negative affect when presented with noxious ARs and a distraction AR. The results show that pain thresholds are significantly increased in each AR condition when a painful stimulation is presented to participants. However, no difference in pain reduction between the noxious and distraction ARs is observed. One reason for this result may come from a manipulation problem: exposure to ARs does not make all participants feel pain. For the group of participants who felt pain when exposed to the ARs, the magnitude of pain tended to be smaller in a noxious AR (fire) condition than in the distraction condition. There was no significant increase in negative affect in the fire AR condition compared with the other conditions. These results may imply that the proposed method could reduce pain through diffuse noxious inhibitory control without producing any extra discomfort.

Interacting with animals can relieve human anxiety and stress. In this research, we particularly look at the “snuggling behaviors” (ex. cats rub their body against a wall) of such animals. We will implement snuggling behaviors inspired by cats into a robot and investigate if such behaviors are effective in reducing human anxiety. In this paper, we will report our initial attempt and early results.

Slander on social networking sites has become a social problem, and measures, such as legislation and stricter regulations have been taken. However, there are limits to these measures, and we have not seen any system that encourages fundamental changes of the mind and behavior of contributors. Therefore, we propose a training robot that contributes to slander suppression, targeting people who post negative words regularly. To change his/her mind and behavior, the proposed robot system will serve as an intermediary to help people break out of the addiction of feeling good about slander by converting negative words in negative messages into positive words, generating positive messages, and presenting them to the user. In this report, we will describe the concept and the initial development of the proposed system to be implemented in a real robot system.

When interacting with humans, virtual agents use both visual and auditory information. We developed a device that can present the facial expressions of a virtual agent together with providing tactile information from the movement of internal weights. Using this device, we conducted a pilot test to investigate how the trustworthiness of the virtual agent changed when the haptic information from the movement of the internal weights was added to the expression of the virtual agent.

The clarity of the position of the eyes and pupils in canid species varies depending on their sociality. Existing social robots, on the other hand, have a wide range of applications, including education, medical care, and customer service, while most of the robots have had a simple design of eyes with a white base and a black iris. However, as in canid species, it is conceivable that the level of appropriate communication intensity varies depending on the purpose of a robot, and that there is a suitable eye design depending on its use. In this study, we propose the appropriate gaze clarity of a robot for three situations where the avatar speaks to the human, the avatar listens to the human's talk, and the avatar is nearby the human during the task requiring concentration.

A robotic gadget that is equipped with a movable weight inside its body is developed. By controlling the movement of the internal weight together with other robotic behaviors such as hand gestures or speech dialogues, it is expected that emotional and/or intentional messaging between users is enhanced. To gain knowledge for designing effective weight shifts, an elicitation study was conducted to investigate how users holding this gadget in their hand interpreted its 36 weight shift patterns generated by setting four basic movement parameters (target position, trajectory, speed, and repetition). Results present mappings between these parameters and the emotional perception of the users. Furthermore, specific weight shift patterns that can express certain human emotions and intentions are revealed. These findings will be useful for designing effective weight shifts to enhance emotional and intentional messaging between users. This study attempts to open a new dimension for the expression capability of robotic gadgets.

A humanoid robot combined with a classroom SNS (social networking service) was introduced into a classroom of remote teaching by elderly persons (aged 78, 83, and 91 years) to school children (aged between 12 to 15 years). The goal was to carry out an ethnographic participatory development of an education support system for elderly teachers and school children. The development formed part of a weekly club activity in an elementary school over the course of six months and consisted of iterating three phases (the experience, reflection, and implementation phases). Through this ethnographic participatory development, we aimed to reveal potential utility and issues in using a social robot combined with a classroom SNS to support remote educational activities between elderly people and children. In addition, the significance of leveraging elderly people in aging societies, especially in education, is highlighted.

To prevent elderly people from being socially isolated, encouraging their self-disclosure takes an important role. We discuss a use case of social robots in which they are deployed as mediators for humans that intermediate remote communication between elderly people and their family members or friends. The goal of this article is to present a design guideline for such social mediator robots based on results obtained from two studies in which a total of 741 elderly people participated. In study 1, we explored topics in dialogues and found that a social mediator robot could well encourage the self-disclosure of the elderly people, particularly in topics of which they usually feel resistance in talking to others (e.g., loss experiences). Thus, we confirmed the feasibility of the social mediator robot. Study 2 pursued the effective personality traits of the social mediator robot. We re-investigated a well-studied research question of matching robot personality to the user. The results provided more detailed knowledge as to similarity-attraction/repulsion than had been reported previously. Finally, design recommendations were discussed by considering the personality traits of the elderly users as well.

Facial and thermal expressions can be used by humans to interpret emotions. While facial expressions can be a voluntary reaction, the change of temperature in the body is often not. Thus, a facial expression may not always be consistent with the emotional state that is expressed by the body temperature. This article aims to study the human perception of the emotional expression and the emotional state of a robot that simultaneously uses its face and body temperature. To this end, a robot, named TherMoody, which has the capability to change its body temperature from 10–55℃, was used. Then, 25 combinations (5x5: one facial expression and one thermal expression for anger, joy, fear, sadness, and neutral state) were evaluated by 15 participants. Thermal expressions were designed based on the metaphors of emotions related to temperature. The results show people tend to base their judgment of the robot’s emotional expression exclusively in its facial expression, regardless of the change of its body temperature. However, there are combinations where the thermal expression predominates over the facial expression when judging the robot’s emotional state. Thus, these combinations may produce the perception that the robot’s emotional expression is, in fact, genuine, simulated, masked, or neutralized.

This study explored olfactory displays for social robots. In particular, we tested decorating robot movements by using smells as a way for nonverbal expression. To this end, two prototype devices which enabled a humanoid robot to present smells during its movements were developed based on the following design requirements: (1) the smell presentation had to be synchronized with the robot movements, (2) the devices could be easily mounted to the robot, (3) the devices could present and switch between multiple smells, and (4) the intensity of the smell presentation was controllable. Initial pilot tests were conducted with human participants.

Nowadays, coordinated switching between autonomous and manual operation, according to the demands of the operator and the task, has become a common type of control approach to compensate for the limitations of autonomous systems. This control mode switching, known also as “Transition of Control”, is usually referred to the transition from autonomous to manual operation and it could have negative effects on the operator or its surroundings depending on the strategies used. In autonomous cars, an unsuccessful takeover command can potentially risk the safety of the drivers and pedestrians. Remote operators of telepresence robots may not be exposed to such risks, but they are not exempt from the negative effects of the transition, especially when the operator is involved in another activity before taking control of the system. This paper reports the design of an interface for a dual control mode telepresence system, explores the factors implied when switching the operation mode, and finally proposes a time-based strategy for the transition of control from autonomous to manual control.

The social isolation of elderly people is becoming a big problem. To solve this problem, social robots have been regarded as suitable interfaces to support these elderly people to communicate with others (e.g. family members). In such robot-mediated communication, it can be expected to elicit self-disclosure from elderly people. In this study, we explored the requirements for intermediately robots to encourage elderly people's self-disclosure. The results suggested that an intermediately robot with human-like behavior can encourage elderly people's self-disclosure about experiences of loss (e.g. health and financial issues). Additionally, we found that warmth and competence judgments to the robot are correlated to elderly people's self-disclosure. From these results, it was suggested that the influence on the self-disclosure of the intermediately robot are strengthened by being regarded as a social other.

Telepresence robots can provide the sense that a remote person is physically present. However, this sense disappears suddenly once a call ends. Therefore, the speaker may feel loneliness. This study explores “tele-vestige” in which speakers can perceive the weak social presence of a remote speaker after a call ended. To provide this tele-vestige, the remote speaker's face is morphed into a telepresence robot's face after the call ends. We conducted an experiment to investigate the effect of this morphing technique on loneliness.

Generation gap can make communication difficult, even within a family. Each family member has a preferred style of communication. To address this, we proposed a shared-agent system for encouraging remote communication between family members. This paper reports the results of a pilot study, in which a prototype robot interface was evaluated, and the acceptance of asynchronous communication by elderly participants was investigated. The effects on family communication were approached from the viewpoint of self-disclosure in old age. Feedback suggested new research hypotheses, for example that the establishment of relationships between the shared-agent and the family members may encourage deeper communication within the family.

High fiving enhances communication in human society. Therefore, a robot that is capable of high fiving could build a better relationship with humans. To design such a robot, it is necessary to determine the requirements of robotic high fives. The goal of this paper is to present such requirements that were identified from the analysis of human high fives, and to show the actual implementations on a humanoid robot. The process of high fiving is composed of two phases: people determine a high five motion according to the current occasion, and then they adjust the motion according to the situation surrounding them. In this paper, we particularly report these motion adjustment functions, which were tested with human participants. Feedback and other requirements for an effective robotic high five are reported.

Work support for elderly people is gaining importance in an aging society. To this end, telepresence robots are expected to provide a promising solution as it could enable people even with some physical difficulties to work from their home. This paper reports our exploratory field trial in which an elderly person gave a lesson about a traditional paper craft to elementary school students over a two-way telepresence robot system. Ongoing development for the system after the trial is described.

To accelerate the developmental process of robots interacting with humans in the real world, we propose the simultaneous introduction of two competing robots into the test field. One robot moves autonomously using a preprogrammed behavior set, while the other is remotely controlled by a human operator. The operator attempts to improve the robot by exploring new behavioral elements. Concurrently, the preprogrammed behavior set is tested by the first robot. The main concept is that by allowing the two robots compete against each other, we aim to accelerate the development process. By applying this methodology, we developed an educational robot for children. Herein we report the functioning of this methodology and how behavioral elements were explored and improved through field development.

This study proposes and demonstrates a progressive development method for an autonomous robot that is used for childhood education. The main concept in this method is to iteratively explore new behavioral factors and use them to progressively develop the robot by concurrently using and comparing two robots in a classroom. Usually, in classrooms for young children, it is practically difficult to recruit a sufficient number of participants and conduct many experiments. The parallel comparison employed in the proposed method enables rapid development to deal with these difficulties.

This study reports the advantages of using a child-operated telepresence robot system for the purpose of remote education. Video conferencing is already common in educational settings, where a foreign language is taught by a native teacher from a remote location; however, there is a serious issue in that children tend to have difficulties or freeze when facing teachers who speak a different language over a monitor. We hypothesize that a child-operated telepresence robot that offers physical participation and operability will help to address this issue. To investigate this hypothesis, we conduct a field experiment with 52 participants (4-8 years old) in classroom environments, and the use of a telepresence robot system is compared with a baseline Skype condition. The results show the advantages of the telepresence robot system for both children and teachers.

We studied educational support delivered through a care-receiving robot (CRR) in a children's group activity intended to promote the learning of English words by teaching the robot. Our prior study investigated the feasibility of the CRR for providing educational support in a situation where a child played with the robot by him/herself. Our research uncovered several impactful effects of the CRR for enhancing childhood education. However, the results were not sufficient to confirm more practical contributions of the CRR toward learning. In this paper, we report on a field experiment we conducted with a group of children at a Japanese kindergarten aged 5-6 years. Our goal was to verify the feasibility of an autonomous CRR for facilitating the learning of English words in an educational setting that closely resembled reality. The experiment was conducted on a group of roughly seven children who participated in an animal gesture game with the robot for four days to learn six English words/names for animals. There were a total of 15 participants, and we held two experimental sessions. In order to compare the educational effects between learning with the aid of the CRR and with an expert robot, both robots were introduced concurrently into classrooms. The experimental results showed that the autonomous CRR was more effective in promoting English vocabulary acquisition among preschoolers compared to the expert robot.

This paper reports the research outcome of a JST PRESTO project “Linking children across the world through telerobotics (2009-2013).” The project explored the use of child-operated telepresence robot systems for the purpose of facilitating international communication between distant classrooms. In particular, it was revealed that young children who could not communicate well with speakers of different languages over conventional video conference services could establish and maintain communication using the telepresence robot system developed by this project. Together with a control experiment to clarify its effectiveness, an international field trial that connected remote classrooms between Australia and Japan was conducted.

We investigate the use of care-receiving robot (CRR) for the purpose of supporting childhood education. In contrast to the conventional teaching agents that are designed to play the role of human teachers or caregivers, the robot here receives cares from children. We hypothesize that by using this CRR, we may construct a new educational framework whose goal is to promote children's spontaneous learning by teaching through teaching the CRR. The paper describes an experiment for investigating whether a CRR can promote children's learning English verbs through teaching it.

We consider the application of telepresence robots for supporting childhood education. One challenge here is to develop a teleoperational robot system that can be manipulated by children themselves. There are two requirements for realizing such a system. First, the system has to be sufficiently intuitive so that child users can control it without the need for detailed instructions. Second, the control of the system should have some amount of enjoyment so that child users do not get bored. To satisfy these requirements, we introduce a tricycle-style teleoperational interface that remotely controls a robot. We also report field tests that are currently being conducted at English learning schools for children in Japan.

A care-receiving robot (CRR) is a robot designed to receive care from its human user. We proposed the concept of the CRR, and assume that allowing children to learn tasks by teaching the CRR is beneficial for their education. So far, we have confirmed the feasibility of the CRR for educational purposes. In the present study, we verified whether the CRR's learning ability influenced the efficiency with which children acquire new knowledge. We conducted a field experiment in an actual classroom at an English language school for Japanese children. The target participants were children between 4-8 years old who attended the school. The participants attempted drawing various shapes along with the robot in order to enhance their knowledge of English words for these shapes (drawing game). The experiment was carried out under three conditions of the CRR's learning ability as follows: an excellent robot that could answer all the questions correctly; a CRR that was capable of learning; and a CRR that was not capable of learning at all. From the experiment, it was found that the CRR that was capable of learning helped children learn unknown English words for shapes. In addition, correct demonstrations by the robot had a greater impact than that had been expected on children's learning ability. The results obtained in this paper suggest that children benefited by teaching the robot and observing demonstrations by the robot.

A tricycle-style teleoperational interface for children to remotely control a robot was developed. There were two crucial requirements in its design: (1) the interface had to be intuitively controllable so that children could use it without requiring detailed instructions and (2) the control of the teleoperational system needed to be fun so that children did not get bored. In this paper, we report an experiment in which 20 children (4-8 years old) performed a range of tasks by remotely controlling a robot using two types of teleoperational interfaces: the tricycle-style interface and a standard video game controller. The results show that the children could perform the tasks better with the tricycle-style interface.

In contrast to conventional teaching agents (including robots) that were designed to play the role of human teachers or caregivers, we propose the opposite scenario in which robots receive instruction or care from children. We hypothesize that by using this care-receiving robot, we may construct a new educational framework whose goal is to promote children's spontaneous learning by teaching through their teaching the robot. In this paper, we describe the introduction of a care-receiving robot into a classroom at an English language school for Japanese children (3--6 years of age) and then conduct an experiment to evaluate if the care-receiving robot can promote their learning using English verbs. The results suggest that the idea of a care-receiving robot is feasible and that the robot can help children learn new English verbs efficiently. In addition, we report on investigations into several forms of teaching performed by children, which were revealed through observations of the children, parent interviews, and other useful knowledge. These can be used to improve the design of care-receiving robots for educational purposes.

A Care-Receiving Robot (CRR) is a robot which is designed so as to be taken care of by humans. The original concept of CRR and its application to reinforce children's learning by teaching was proposed by [4]. In contrast to the conventional use of 'childcare robots' which play the role of care-givers (taking care of children), here we will introduce a reverse scenario where a robot is a care-receiver (being taken care of by children). The framework is presupposed to be promising not only because it could accelerate children's spontaneous active learning by teaching but also because it would be considered as being ethically safer and acceptable to a wider range of societies. This paper reports our pilot trials whose goal is to implement CRR at an English learning school for children. From the trials we have already observed that the robot we implemented induced children's care-taking behaviors.

The paper describes our project whose final goal is to link remote classrooms by telerobotics. The first target is to offer children in Japan an opportunity to remote-control a robot placed in an US classroom, and participate in the classroom activities. By conducting field trials at nursery schools and language schools for children, we aim to identify and solve critical problems which might prevent this potentially popular technology from becoming a reality. Here, we will report the development of a remote-hand device which seems to be the most required element for the proposed system.

A Care-Receiving Robot (CRR) receives care from the people around it. The concept of CRR was first proposed in 2009 [1], [2] by the second author of this paper. This is a novel concept developed in response to the need for continuing to involve human teachers and adult care-givers in raising and nurturing children even as we move on to the next step in technological development and gradually begin to incorporate robots in our daily lives and most importantly in our educational environment. In the past decade, the interest in the development of educational agents has gradually grown to include robots [3]. Educational robots so far have been seen in the teaching role [4], [5], [6]. In contrast, this concept explores the learner role for the robot even though its goal is to teach. The idea behind CRR is inspired by the concept of learning by teaching developed formally in the 1980s [7] and further tested in other works [8]. We have conducted a series of experiments to test the concept of CRR. We have formally launched an investigation into the feasibility, benefits, and requirements for implementing CRR in real classrooms [9]. In this paper, we will report our early findings about the environmental and circumstantial setup for successfully implementing CRR and its impact on students in terms of learning reinforcement. We have set CRR's competence level to two opposite values in the set of experiments we describe in this paper. We present here the comparison data from our analysis of the interaction rate during the two conditions. Our most prominent finding is that children are quite happy to play ‘teacher’ to a weaker student (CRR). The benefit of this opportunity is that it not only boosts the child's self-confidence about the topic, but also reinforces the existing knowledge of the child.

The goal of this short manuscript is to provide a research instance for the special session of HAI (Human-Agent Interaction) at the RO-MAN 2010 conference. One discussion issue being addressed in this community is the debate of virtual agents versus real robots. Here, we will bring our new research project on linking children across the world through telerobotics as a case which includes both virtual agents and real robots in a system to be developed.

In this position paper, we will raise some critical issues on applying robotics technologies into the educational environment. The series of discussions are based on our previous study on toddlers - robots interaction at a nursery school. In reaction to the notice warning of its potential risk, we will present a scenario in which robots are employed with less ethical concern and more educational contribution.

In this paper, we present a barebones robot which is capable of interacting with humans based on social contingency. It expands the previous work of a contingency detector into having both human-model updating (developmental capability) and policy improvement (learning capability) based on the framework of Infomax control. The proposed new controller interacts with humans in both active and responsive ways handling the turn-taking between them.

The goal of the RUBI project is to accelerate progress in the development of social robots by addressing the problem at multiple levels, including the development of a scientific agenda, research methods, formal approaches, software, and hardware. The project is based on the idea that progress will go hand-in-hand with the emergence of a new scientific discipline that focuses on understanding the organization of adaptive behavior in real-time within the environments in which organisms operate. As such, the RUBI project emphasizes the process of design by immersion, i.e., embedding scientists, engineers and robots in everyday life environments so as to have these environments shape the hardware, software, and scientific questions as early as possible in the development process. The focus of the project so far has been on social robots that interact with 18 to 24 month old toddlers as part of their daily activities at the Early Childhood Education Center at the University of California, San Diego. In this document we present an overall assessment of the lessons and progress through year two of the project.

The design and development of social robots that interact and assist people in daily life requires moving into unconstrained daily-life environments. This presents unexplored methodological challenges to robotic researchers. Is it possible, for example, to perform useful experiments in the uncontrolled conditions of everyday life environments? How long do these studies need to be to provide reliable results? What evaluations methods can be used?In this paper we present preliminary results on a study designed to evaluate an algorithm for social robots in relatively uncontrolled, daily life conditions. The study was conducted as part of the RUBI project, whose goal is to design and develop social robots by immersion in the environment in which the robots are supposed to operate. First we found that in spite of the relative chaotic conditions and lack of control existing in the daily activities of a child-care center, it is possible to perform experiments in a relatively short period of time and with reliable results. We found that continuous audience response methods borrowed from marketing research provided good inter-observer reliabilities, in the order of 70%, and temporal resolution (the cut-off frequency is in the order of 1 cycle per minute) at low cost (evaluation is performed continuously in real time). We also experimented with objective behavioral descriptions, like tracking children's movement across a room. These approaches complemented each other and provided a useful picture of the temporal dynamics of the child-robot interaction, allowing us to gather baseline data for evaluating future systems. Finally, we also touch the ongoing study of behavior analysis through 3 months long-term child-robot interaction.

We have been conducting HRI (human-robot interaction) studies with the basic principle of design by immersion, which suggests the importance of researchers moving themselves into unconstrained daily-life environments. This is crucial for design and development of social robots that interact and assist people in the daily real-world. In this paper we report findings on a study where a small humanoid robot kept attending at a nursery school on a daily basis for more than three months. We focus on children's touch behavior on the robot, and conduct video analyses based on six categories related to the touch behavior. Results tell us important conditions for designing every-day robots.