Evaluation of conveying spatial information by pointing gestures of a tele-immersion robot avatar

抄録

Robot avatars are attracting attention as a means of remote communication. One of the elements required when using a robot avatar to work and communicate with a partner in another location is the conveyance of information by pointing in order to share the location of objects and other information. However, it has not yet been fully evaluated to what extent pointing gesture by a robot avatar, which is treated as its own alter ego, is able to convey spatial information. In this study, we developed a robot avatar that realizes the tele-immersion of communication and evaluated the degree to which pointing information by the robot avatar can be conveyed to the other person through an evaluation experiment. The results showed that the information conveyed by the pointing gesture of the robot avatar using a humanoid communication robot was generally communicated and effective. In the case of the robot avatar that can be programmed to point in the correct direction, it was found that information is conveyed to some extent by pointing with the hand without using the index finger.