Abstract
In recent years, character chat is widely used as a means of communication in remote areas. In particular, character chat is used by people around the world in online games, etc. In face-to-face communication, humans share embodied rhythms, that is, the listener's movements such as nodding and body movements, are synchronized with the speaker's speech. This phenomenon, called entrainment, plays an important role in smooth interaction and communication. We have developed an embodied entrainment technology called iRT(InterRobot Technology) that generates automatically communicative movements based on voice input. In order to support communication via virtual characters in an online chat, we applied iRT to the characters and developed a typing-driven embodied entrainment character chat system "InterChat" that generates a character's interactive movements from the user's typing rhythms and natural movements from the meaning of messages in transmission and reception. In this paper, in consideration of the practical use for multiple users, we propose an arrangement of characters in chat system for four users, and we conduct the chat communication experiment. In addition, based on the evaluation result, we develop a typing-driven embodied entrainment character chat system for up to six users.
