In this study, we propose a novel concept for social interaction with robots based on the multi-party conversation. The concept is defined "participation metaphor" which is utilize as novel interface in human-computer interaction and it's obligate to share the information in the seamless manner and with less effort to the conversation. To accomplish the goal, we develop a novel social interface as robotic platform of MAWARI. The interface of MAWARI is consisting of three sociable robots that design with minimal designing mechanism. It is capable of providing the information through the multi-party conversation and it's accommodating for user to get the information with less attempt to the conversation. In this paper, we discuss about our concept and system architecture, and finally discuss the experimental results to discover how MAWARI-based interface is capable to establish smooth and comfortable multi-party conversation to obtain the information.

This paper reports cross-modal effects between different modalities regarding an entrainment in human robot interaction. The entrainment is the phenomenon that human's behavior is synchronized with robot's behavior. We argued whether the crossmodal effects between words and gestures could influence the entrainment; especially, in the relationship between deictic words and pointing gestures, it is investigated how the percentages of deictic words and pointing gestures that people use to refer to objects are changed by the combination of deictic words and pointing gestures that a robot uses to confirm indicated objects. According to our experimental results, participates used their pointing gestures more frequently when the robot used its deictic terms, and participates used their deistic terms when the robot used its pointing gestures. The results showed the cross-modal effects between words and gestures has potential to occur in human robot interaction. We believe these findings are available to robot's dialog design to elicit human's behavior that a robot wants.

A large network delay is likely to obstruct human interaction in telecommunication systems such as telephony or video conferencing systems. In spite of the extensive investigations that have been carried out on network delays of voice and image data, there have been few studies regarding support for embodied communication under the conditions of network delay. To maintain smooth human interaction, it is important that the various ways in which delay is manifested are understood. We have already developed an embodied virtual communication system that uses an avatar called "VirtualActor," in which speakers who are remotely located from one another can share embodied interaction in the same virtual space. Responses to a questionnaire that was used in a communication experiment confirmed that a fixed 500-ms network delay has no effect on interactions via VirtualActors. In this paper, we propose a method of presenting a speaker's voice and an avatar's motion feedback in the case of a 1.5-s network delay using VirtualActors. We perform two communication experiments under different conditions of network delay. The aim of the first experiment is to examine the effect of a random time delay on the conversation. The second experiment is conducted under the conditions of a free-form conversation that takes place in 5 scenarios-1 real-time scenario without a network delay and 4 scenarios with network delay that involve a combination of a delay in the talker's voice and in his/her avatar's motion feedback. The subjects consisted of a total of 30 students who worked in 15 pairs and who were familiar with each other. A sensory evaluation shows the effects upon communication of delays in the avatar's motion feedback, from the viewpoint of supporting the interaction.

The paper presents a persuasion effect of a robot's whispering behavior that consists of a whispering gesture and small voice. Whispering behavior naturally provides physical proximity and the context of confidential talks that increase intimacy with each other. We have conducted a between-subject experiment to investigate the persuasion effects of whispering gesture and small voice. In the experiment, a robot requested an annoying task, which is a writing as many multiplication table equations as possible. The result shows that whispering gesture significantly increased the number of equations and writing time, meanwhile, small voice had no effect for them. The reason might be that we used simply small voice (voiced speech) not but breathed speech. We believe that whispering behavior is useful for various services that require persuasion effects, such as advertisements, sales promotions, encouragement to study and so on.

We propose a novel method of expressing emotions for a robot by dynamically changing the color luminosity of its body. To identify color and dynamic parameters for representing emotions, we asked subjects to select hue values and frequencies and waveforms of blinking to represent the 24 emotions of Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. The results indicate that the hue value represents basic types of emotion, i.e., anger-red, anticipation-amber, joy-yellow, trust-green, fear-violet, surprise-red, sadness-blue, and disgust-purple, and the duration and waveform represent emotion intensity, i.e., a rectangular waveform with high frequency represents intense emotion. Another experiment validated that emotions of a robot expressed using our model impressed other subjects appropriately.

This study set out to transmit rhythm through tactile sensation using air-jet stimuli. First, we clarified an optimum position for the stimulating air-jet and set an absolute threshold for this position by using the method of limits; we also investigated the intensity of air-jet stimulation using magnitude estimation. Next, we evaluated transmission of rhythm by three methods: air-jet stimulation, sound of percussion and vibratory stimulation. Experimental results show that there is almost no difference between using sound of percussion and air-jet stimulation in the transmission of rhythm. Therefore, we conclude that the transmission of rhythm by air-jet stimulation is viable. In a future study we will investigate the relationship between psychological impressions and the physical characteristics by air-jet stimulation.

Human errors can be prevented when the person concerned is made to notice from the outside. The external cue must lead to the prevention of the human errors. The external cues should be useful. Then, this research was to examine experimentally whether behavior of using external cue information was influenced from the usability of the cue. Participant's task is to memorize the places of the targets and recall them by clicking the targets. Participants can use some help information during the recall phase. The display way of the help information was varied. One is that the palce of target was displayed by the coordinates of two dimension of matrix panel(low usability). The other is that the color of target was changed from green to purple(high usability). As a result, when the usability was higher, participants use the external cues and it was suggested that external cues lead to the prevention of human errors.

In this paper, we collected 28 communication notebooks from four cafes and a noodle shop, and observed the existence of features, such as date, signature, illustration, and so on, for each post of each notebook. By analyzing the observed data by aggregate results and statistically significant test, we found that (1) more than half of posts didn't include mentions to others, (2) the series of features were not observed in random; the same feature tended to appear in series. This result shows that the emergence of implicit norm governs communication-styles in communication notebooks.

In this paper, we describe "Langrid-Gaming," a multilingual participatory gaming simulation approach using a Language Grid. Gaming simulations provide an incentive for the participants to be involved more actively by dramatizing the issues. In Langrid-Gaming, participants have a goal first. They communicate or negotiate through role-playing and select the next action, and they exchange information to reach the goal. Langrid-Gaming enables the design of a multilingual environment for collaboration wherein participants use their mother tongue to communicate and interact with one another in multilingual chatting. For fieldwork, we conducted multilingual participatory gaming workshops using Langrid-Gaming. In these workshops, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese participated; the theme of the Langrid-Gaming was the "global food problem." In conclusion, we obtained the following results: the participants shared and thought together about the global food problem, offering their perspectives on the problem. In the workshops, they could see and experience a major population crash that occurred during the game, and they concluded that they will run out of food unless we change their ways. They also found that advanced countries need to help developing countries increase their yields and adapt to climate change. Participants can discuss topics easily, and the system is suitable for helping to solve global problems.

Portability of an eye tracking system encourages us to develop a technique for estimating 3D point-of-regard. Unlike conventional methods, which estimate the position in the 2D image coordinates of the mounted camera, such a technique can represent richer gaze information of the human moving in the larger area. In this paper, we propose a method for estimating the 3D point-of-regard and a visualization technique of scanpath under natural head movements for the head-mounted device. We employ visual SLAM technique to estimate head pose and extract environmental information. Even in cases where the head moves dynamically, the proposed method could obtain 3D point-of-regard. Additionally, multiple scanpaths are appropriately overlaid on the scene camera image.

The stereo and surround audio systems that are most generally used today are for static audiences within a limited listening area. To construct the stereo or surround systems for a walking-around listener, some basic data should be acquired on our perceptual inclination regarding directional hearing and the volume balances between multiple speakers. Using the behavioral evaluation method applying the comfortable listening level measurement, we found that different sound contents showed different variation between monaural and stereo reproduction conditions.

Sound has a profound impact not only on acoustic sense but also cognitive processes such as mental imagery and associative memory. The concept of "soundscape" proposed by R. Mary Schaffer is to utilize the feature of sound as a stimulus for realizing the world around us. In this study, we employ a soundscape methodology to provide local residents living in Juso area the opportunity to raise people's consciousness. Experimental results show the availability of soundscape methodology on consciousness reformation.