昆虫モデルのロボットの歩容が人間に与える印象の評価

抄録

In recent years, robots are increasingly used in many fields such as the entertainment and nursing, but robot design that concentrates on establishing rapport with humans has not been studied satisfactorily. Therefore, if we elucidate how to improve rapport between robots and humans, we can provide more human-friendly robot service in the future. In this research, we focus on insects because they differ from humans with respect to both body structure and appearance. That is, we carried out experiments on insect-like robots (both simulations and physical robots), in order to understand what kind of movement could improve the friendliness felt by the human observers. Our experimental results suggest that human friendliness is improved if the robots perform gaits that are similar to humans, such as a similar walking cycle and a sine wave walking trajectory with low amplitude.