In recent years, communication robots are commonly used in various purposes and situations such as guidance services at hotels and stations, elderly support, etc. in Japan. However, it is also shown that people still have a sense of anxiety toward robots. For this reason, there are few people who have motivations to communicate with robots. On the other hand, it has been suggested that the emotional expression of robots contributes to create a sense of familiarity and smooth communication. Therefore, we propose a method of emotional expression and enhancement by changing the color of the clothes the robot is wearing. In this research, we have matched the clothing color with speech emotion for communication robot. As a result of the experiment, we have found the matching between the clothing color and 10 emotions (joy, anger, sorrow, fear, shame, like, dislike, excite, relief and surprise).

Successful cases of sales promotion using a self-recommendation robot (SRR) are increasing. SRR is a robot system that moves a product being promoted and makes it appear as if it were a robot itself. Namely, for the robot, recommending itself is the same as recommending the product. In the case of actual sales promotion, the SRR is expected to express emotions such as “I am happy to see you,” as in the case of sales promotions by conventional robots. However, since the SRRs do not have arms, legs, or faces, their behaviors and appearances differ from humanoid or anthropomorphic robots. Hence, it is impossible to apply the findings on the emotional expressions of conventional robots to the SRRs. There has still been insufficient research on the emotional expressions of the SRR, and speech and interaction design have been based on the knowledge and senses of individual developers. Therefore, we conducted an impression evaluation survey to clarify the factors that form the impression of the SRR. Referring to Mehrabian’s experiments, we evaluated SRR’s impressions by dividing emotional expressions into “motion (visual) information”, “vocal (auditory) information” and “verbal information” in our experiment. The results showed that vocal Information has a significant impact on forming the impression of the SRR.

Improving comfort when driving on the road is an important aspect of customer satisfaction. There are a wide range of factors related to comfort. In this study, all roadscape components on expressways were considered as roadscape composition type, and the effects of these types on comfort were determined. Specifically, we used the roadscape composition type as explanatory variables and the results of the comfort questionnaire as objective variables, and analyzed them using Quantification Theory 1, adding considerations based on partial correlation coefficients and category scores. Along with considering the influence of each roadscape composition type on comfort based on partial correlation coefficients and category scores, the number of roadscape composition type and the size of roadscape composition type were also found to affect comfort. Even roadscape composition type that are not highly comfortable (e.g., falling object prevention fences) can be expected to improve comfort by improving their shape and color.

We evaluated the suppressing effect of weak-acidic polyester on itching during sleep when wearing a sleep garment made of weak-acidic polyester for the patients with atopic dermatitis. The weak-acidic polyester knitted fabric was prepared from commercial weak-acidic polyester, and applied for a sleep garment. The degree of itching during sleep was evaluated by VAS, and it was confirmed that the degree of itching was lower in patients with atopic dermatitis when wearing a sleep garment made of weak- acidic polyester than when wearing that made of untreated polyester. When the patients with atopic dermatitis work up a sweat during sleep, the sweat contains histamine as an itching component so that they feel itchy while sleeping. The weak-acidic polyester has an antibacterial effect against Staphylococcus aureus by maintaining the skin pH around 5.5, and it is considered that itching could be inhibited by suppressing the growth of Staphylococcus aureus.

We all need to manage our diets to lead healthy lives. Therefore, we focused on the temperature difference between the oral cavity and the food to improve the food experience and change the taste perception. In this paper, we investigated the changes in food experience and taste perception caused by the different temperatures of the spoon and food. The result of the study revealed that the “throat feeling” was improved, and the “deliciousness” and “comfort” increased when participants tasted the food with a spoon of the same temperature as that preferred for each food. In addition, we found that the combination of spoon and food temperature extended the food experience, and the perception of “sweetness” varied depending on the temperature of the spoon.

In this study, the binaural model for the sound image elevation estimation was extended and experimentally verified under adverse perceptual conditions in a car cabin. First, the relationship between the spectrum of left and right ear input signals and sound image elevation in a simulation of a car cabin environment and in an actual car cabin environment was learned using a neural network. Then, cross validation of the proposed method was conducted under the conditions of a sound field where detection and discrimination of the spectral notches, an important cue for sound source elevation perception, is difficult, and as a result, high generalization performance was obtained. The model was then further extended and its accuracy was again tested in the interior environment of a car with noise. Results verified that the proposed approach exhibited the same trends as the conventional method.

Sex hormones vary depending on physiological or pathological state of human. Thus, to monitor their history of long-term transition is helpful to evaluate and manage the health. In this study, we developed a protocol for quantitative analysis of three sex hormones, which are testosterone, progesterone, and estradiol, simultaneously from a single fingernail sample. To demonstrate efficaciousness of the protocol, these sex hormones from fingernail samples taken from healthy seven males and seven females were determined and found significant differences among sexes, where testosterone was significantly higher in the male fingernail samples than those of females, contrastingly progesterone and estradiol were significantly higher in the female fingernail samples than those of males. These biologically plausible results were corroborated by the sex hormones independently determined by using their saliva. The determination of sex hormones by nail may contribute to the continuous evaluation of our physiological state in everyday life.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, normal activities were significantly restricted, and majority of people were required to work from home. However, the extent to which people’s work and lifestyle were affected varied depending on industry and company size. For some, working from home was a significant change from their pre-pandemic lifestyle, while others who already worked from home did not experience such a drastic change. Previous studies have shown that changes in lifestyle, such as working from home, can affect eating behaviors and daily diet. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on dietary behaviors. Our findings indicated that both men and women had greater opportunities to eat at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to an increased use of ready-to-eat meals. Additionally, our study revealed that people became more environmentally and food-conscious as they spent more time at home to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission.

We have found that various cognitive biases would interfere with evacuation behavior during a disaster, and this have caused many casualties. In this study, we focused on the conformity bias, one of the cognitive biases, which is introduced by evacuation order sentences with information about other residences’ behavior, to facilitate evacuation behavior. In the experiment, we presented the evacuation order sentences, and pictures which depict the scene of disaster, or normal situation. Participants evaluated the degree of risk for the picture, and degree of necessity of evacuation from the scene. Our results demonstrated that the conformity bias would facilitate evacuation especially for the low-risk situation. In addition, we found that judgments of the need for evacuation can be predicted by the rating of the degree of danger, disaster experience, sense of crisis about disasters, and the other-personality-orientations of the participants.

In this study, we focus on the ability to recognize pain perceptions and thoughts and the ability to self-regulate cranial nerve activity occurring in the brain by self- introspection, and investigated the effects of auditory neuro-feedback training (hereinafter referred to as NFBT) incorporating breathing exercises on young women with paramenstrual symptoms. Nine out of 18 healthy women underwent alpha control training. In this study, we used the ABA method according to the menstrual cycle and intervened in the B phase. As a result, the intervention group showed a significant decrease in depression and rumination after the interventions. Furthermore, a significant positive correlation was observed between the NRS improvement rate and the Pamin cycle improvement rate during menstruation throughout the study period. It was suggested that auditory NFBT using breathing techniques may be one of the methods for coping with recognizing pain and psychiatric symptoms among the paramenstrual symptoms.

This study discusses the results of a literature survey and cross-tabulation analysis of the objects of kawaii emotions and causes of kawaii emotions. From ancient language dictionaries, historically, kawaii could be said to be mainly used to refer to one’s relatives and gradually to non-relative children, romantic partners, and artificial objects. Based on the descriptions from various ancient language dictionaries, this study presents four causes of kawaii emotions: the morphology of the object, its behaviors and facial expressions, relationship between human and it, and its perceived personality. The primary causes of kawaii emotions toward relatives and romantic partners are the relationship with the object and its personality, and the causes toward non-relative children are the morphology of the object, its behavior and facial expressions, and its personality, and the causes toward artificial objects are the morphology of the object, its behavior and facial expressions, and the relationship.

In this paper, we propose an interactive support system for generating picture books. The proposed system consists of two parts: a sentence generation part and a picture book image generation part. The sentence generation part takes a topic and an opening sentence of a picture book as inputs, and generates sentences of the picture book in an interactive manner. The user can select the most appropriate sentence from the generated sentences to create a story for the picture book, and can modify specific parts of the sentences. The image generation part generates a background image of the picture book using the text as an input, and acquires the necessary image objects for the picture book from the web. Using the retrieved images, the user can paste the image objects into the background image to create a picture book image. With these two parts, a picture book can be created without the user having to directly write the text and pictures. Through evaluation experiments, we confirmed that the proposed system can generate a picture book that is comfortable as a story and that can arouse the reader’s interest.

Today, experience vision and other methods that apply the structured scenario method are used to support innovative proposals. The evaluation of scenario proposals has been a challenge. This study aims to solve this problem. The starting point for this research on evaluation methods was the concept of customer satisfaction analysis. This concept is based on a time axis from the past to the present, but we thought that it could be applied to a time axis from the present to the near future. In other words, we devised a new portfolio analysis of expectations. As an example of this research, an analysis was conducted on the theme of “hydration”. As a result, a comparative analysis of four different scenario proposals was possible. Furthermore, the ranking of multiple scenario alternatives was also made possible through the numerical quantification that was devised. We also showed that this quantification can be applied to a comparative evaluation between a pair of scenario alternatives.

In this paper, we propose a new personalization method for a dialogue system using external knowledge and Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs). The proposed system is divided into a personalize-part and a response-generation part with Japanese Transformer model. The personalize-part consists of a learned GCN, which can estimate the user’s interests, and a knowledge graph as external knowledge. The personalize-part can add an appropriate template to the response by Transformer according to the dialogue situation and user’s interests. Estimating a topic interesting for each user, the new system can provide an intimate dialogue reflecting individualized interests. We carried out extensive evaluation experiments, and it has shown that the proposed system exceeds the conventional Transformer dialogue model by 35.6% in the variety of information and by 34.0% in the level of desire to use the system.

We investigated Kansei hierarchical structures of protective films for smartphones to clarify user’s evaluation criteria. The hierarchical structure was hypothesized to be divided into three layers: physical element, impression, and value. For physical elements, optical characteristics were measured. For impression, evaluation words for protective films were collected by the evaluation grid experiment, and selected words were used in the affective evaluation experiment. Then, factor analyses were performed to extract factors. For value, three words were adopted: “Good”, “Like”, and “Premium”. Hierarchical structures were modeled using the structural equation modeling to clearly relationships among three layers. The results showed that Tt and Haze influenced the factor of natural, and the factor influenced values. Finally, we also investigated individual difference in hierarchical structures, the results showed that participant types were divided into “Clear” and “Clear and Matt”, and the type of “Clear and Matt” had additional evaluation criteria compared type of “Clear”.

The potential value of food has a great impact on the customers’ desire to purchase and eat food. Our previous study showed that curry roux for home use induces an empathetic bond between a parent and a child. In this study, characteristic of curry as one of Japan’s most popular dishes was investigated through a paired experiment (N=12). The examinees of each pair were university friends. Strength of empathy during meal was investigated using Curve Drawing Method (CDM), a continuous time-series affective evaluation, and synchronization of spoons move, an indicator of empathy proposed in our previous study. These results demonstrate that an empathetic bond was induced between friends as well as the parent and child. This study revealed that long seller food products hold potential value, which is a potential relationship between human and food, as its apparent value.