In order to realize touch communication with virtual characters, we propose a new tactile presentation method which uses the user’s own body part for a sense of touch along with a sense that the body part is possessed by virtual character. In this paper, as an initial study, we created a system in which the user and a virtual character’s hands are visually fused, and a pseudo-high-five is performed. The applicability of the proposed method and points for improvement are discussed based on the results of user experiments.

In this study, we attempt to enhance emotion in online live music concerts by focusing on the influence of entrainment to the rhythm of music on emotion. We propose a light stick-type device that changes the audience's own light stick swinging motion and their perception of it by adding a force stimulus to the audience's light stick swinging motion. Experimental results suggest that the proposed device promoted the user's light stick swinging behavior and enhanced emotion. Results also suggested that presenting force stimuli in accordance with musical rhythms could be a useful for presenting the presence of other people.

During group decision-making, a group with an imbalanced minority and majority typically suffers normative bias. This bias creates socio-emotional conflict and decreases group member consent and decision power. Thus, we propose a novel video-chat system, "Divided Presence," which aims to reduce this bias by equalizing the apparent number of majority and minority participants using a pseudo-population increase. Members of a discussion use computer graphics avatars on monitors instead of their actual video appearances during communication. The apparent number of discussion members increases when two avatars are assigned to an arbitrary minority member; the avatars then speak on behalf of him or her. We evaluate the system with a three-person consensus game, where a minority member is assigned two avatars. The results show that our system increases the degree of consent among the majority participants when they finally agree to the minority opinion.

"Mirroring" refers to the unconscious mimicry of another person's behaviors, such as their facial expressions. Mirroring has many positive effects, such as enhancing closeness and improving the flow of a conversation, which enriches the quality of communication. Our study set out to devise a means of evoking these positive effects in a video chat without any conscious effort of participants. We constructed a videophone system, called FaceShare, which can deform the user's face into a smile in response to their partner's smiling. That is, our system generates mirroring by producing a pseudo-smile through image processing. We conducted an experiment in which pairs of participants had brief conversations via FaceShare. The results implied that mirroring using the pseudo-smile lets the mimicker, whose face is deformed according to the expressions of their partner, feel a closeness, and improves the flow of the conversation for both the mimicker and the mimickee, who sees the mimicker's deformed face.

To effectively utilize gaze in one-to-many communication, robots must direct and avert their gaze with appropriate timing. However, few studies have focused on this aspect of communication because of the difficulty in detecting the position of many gaze recipients and directing appropriate gazes to each. This paper proposes a system of robotic eyes that can send averted or direct gazes simultaneously to multiple recipients by switching between convex and hollow eye shapes, which we call Transgazer.

We focus on animals as a resource of processing capability in crowdsourcing and propose an Animal Crowdsourcing (we call it "Animal Cloud”, too) that resolves problems with cooperation between computers and human or animals. This paper gives an overview of Animal Crowdsourcing and reports on the interim results of our learning experiments using rats (Long-Evans rats) to verify the feasibility of Animal Crowdsourcing.