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.

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.

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).