2006 Volume 11 Issue 2 Pages 245-252
When robots are introduced into human society in the future, the robots and humans will pass each other frequently. Hence it is important that the humans do not feel uncomfortable or insecure about the moving robots. In the present paper, impressions for biped walking by humanoid robots are evaluated using virtual reality. A virtual (CG) robot in actual size is displayed to subjects using CAVE, and the impressions for the robot are evaluated by Semantic Differential method. Each subject sits on a chair placed at the center of CAVE. He/she sees the robot of 1.54[m] height cutting right in front of him/her, hearing the walking sound of the robot. The distance between the subject and the robot's path is 1[m], and the walking speed is 0.17[m/s]. Four different walking motions are presented to all subjects: the body is swinging sideway or not, and the knees are bent or stretched. After seeing each motion, the subject answers the questionnaires about his/her impression: 29 adjective pairs are evaluated in 5 rating grades. The subjects are 34 men and 13 women aged between 14 and 32; they do not get a chance to see real humanoid robots. The results show the effects of side-swinging of the body and bending of the knees on human impressions. Factor analysis found three factors: friendliness, quickness and activity. The biped walking with the knees stretching has higher quickness than the walking with the knees bending. The walking with the body side-swinging has higher activity than the walking with no side-swinging.
