This study aims to clarify the semantic processing mechanism of pictures, in which pictures and their meanings are not the same. Meanings are sent out from pictures using all conceptual extension mechanisms such as synecdoche, metonymy and metaphor. Time required to judge the relationship between picture and meaning depends on these types of figures of speech. This mechanism was examined in relation to two strategies, word association and perceptual simulation, which were employed to determine the relationship between picture and meaning. It was assumed that the “mechanism for recognition of figures of speech”would determine the strategy, and these strategies would generate differences in reaction time. We verified this hypothesis through two tasks, by changing variable conditions. As a result, it was found that at least synecdoche and metonymy could be treated as specific recognition mechanisms for which word association and perceptual simulation were suitable in meaning processing.

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We have studied on a method for standard parameter value scales for kansei information. Kansei parameter method was able to classify some musics and movies in term of kansei information. In this paper, taste difference of fragrance in age is reported introduced from a kansei parameter analysis. Cluster analysis shows some similar points between results of SD method and kansei parameter method in detail. The experiment was conducted for the office worker and the college student by making 15 kinds of perfumes into sample. Young age may notice at fruity fragrance rather than a floral one.

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This paper aims at the construction of a cooperative partner system that plays a seven-card stud poker game with a human partner against a computer opponent player. The partner system gives a human partner player presentation about which tactics to take in a game and the grounds for presented tactics. When a human player makes another tactics, a human player and the partner system discuss which tactics to take by presenting their grounds for tactics to each other as follows.(1) A human player presents the grounds for his/her tactics.(2) If the partner system accepts the player's grounds, they take presented tactics. Otherwise, the partner system asks whether the player has other grounds or not. Through these discussions, a human player and the partner system play a poker game cooperating with each other
This paper also performs comparative experiments to confirm the usefulness of the presented partner system, where each subject plays games with/without the partner system.

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The objective of this paper is to visualize relationships between evaluated objects and evaluated items by means of a fuzzy correspondence analysis, wherein evaluation fluctuations are properly treated. Every relationship is expressed by a circle corresponding to each of objects and items which illustrates its relative fuzziness. A similarity is also proposed to express numerically these relationships. In order to deal with customers' fastidious demands with some evaluation items, OWA operator and the similarity are used to show the orders of objects depending on Linguistic Quantifiers. In this paper, traditional crafts in Ishikwa Prefecture are focused to show the effectiveness of these methods.

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In an IT industry, people make effort in the innovation and reform of their company in order to increase a company value. The objective of this paper is to recognize and evaluate how employees are satisfied of their situations, in other words, to clarify the latent structure of IT employees' vague awareness under their behaviors and decision makings. In this paper, such a structure of vague awareness is named Kansei values. Researches of such Kansei values results in understanding what kind of Kansei values have strong relations to good communications with customer companies. Such results illustrate how to educate, train and foster employees as a business strategy. We searched 167 front marketing staff of five regional business partner companies by means of questionnaires. The relations between organizations and employees and between the line employees and the staff employees in a company are analyzed based on rough set theory and pattern classification analysis as well as on basic statistics. The results of the analysis explain Kansei values that individual employees do improve themselves and improve their own quality enhance and heighten the management quality and company competitiveness, furthermore, provide added values for employees themselves.

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This paper describes the support system for story creation using some pictures. In this system pictures are used as material for story creation. The input to the system is information on some pictures. The output of the system is incomplete story and descriptions for story creation. The user modifies incomplete story using descriptions that the system shows, in order to complete story they feel interesting. The present system consists of the basic contents explanatory part which outputs behavior description explaining behavior of the object in respective pictures, the connective relationship explanatory part which outputs connective relationship description explaining the connection between the pictures, and the story composition part composing descriptions obtained by other two parts to output the incomplete story. The user completes the incomplete story by using the behavior and the connective relationship descriptions. This paper also shows the experimental results for the confirmation of the usefulness of the present system. In the experiment, some subjects perform the story creation using the present system. And they evaluate the quality of the story and also the stories are evaluated objectively.

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This paper discusses the recognition of music characteristic with the correspondence analysis. We already found the music analysis system with rough-sets, so that we fixed music elements analysis system included negative images. It was able to especially make adjectives needed for the music analysis. We do the questionnaire survey to music major students by using these adjectives. From the result of questionnaire survey, it is shown that the corresponding analysis is an useful tool for the music characteristic recognition. As for it, the feature of music is expressed by three dimension space that is shown with three axes of coordinates.

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This paper discusses the issue of users' retrieval strategies in relation to development of a kansei-based music retrieval system. Little attention has been paid to this issue in this research area, even though it is important to build such systems. To study this issue, we performed two experiments regarding users' strategies for retrieving desired tunes using kansei-based music retrieval interface. Twenty-three subjects expressed their selections using two input methods in random order. One is uses all 19 pairs of kansei words. We call it a “passive selection”. The other method allows selection of preferred kansei settings from among the 19 pairs. We call it an “active selection”. It was found from the results that users' retrieval strategies were influenced by selection methods. Moreover, the results indicate the rating of midrange inputs is not very important factor for users in the music information retrieval.

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This study has improved the previously proposed models for creation and consensus building processes to propose a process model for cooperative work involving concept sharing. In addition, it has built a system called MochiFlash to support the cooperative work process. MochiFlash allows the user to visualize their own concept as an image map through the placement of objects, such as keywords and figures, onto a two-dimensional map. In the cooperative work involving concept sharing with MochiFlash, the users understand each other's concept through communication via their image maps and repeat negotiations among them to reach an agreement. Through a case study using picture book creation as an example, the authors have found that MochiFlash is effective in supporting cooperative work involving concept sharing and that the effective usage pattern depends on the degree of intimacy between the users.

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This paper shows an analysis and model about a mechanism that makes different media information harmonized. Our purpose is to model subjective interpretation of internal space based on 2d and 3d descriptions. Once a model is established, subjective interpretation of unknown information such as 2d image and 3d object data can be predicted. Statistical analysis is applied to obtain the relationship between subjective responses and 2d living room images and 3d chair models. The system consists of two sub-systems to predict interpreted adjective words of living rooms and chairs, and to retrieve 3d chair models harmonized to a living room from database based on user's interpretation. We establish and evaluate the retrieval system. The accuracy of the retrieval result is 72% in terms of the first candidate of 3d chairs. We found that not only adjective relations but also physical descriptive relations between 2d and 3d data are necessary for harmony between living rooms and chairs.

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TheKansei robot “Ifbot”communicates with people by considering its own emotions. Ifbot has many facial expressions to communicate enjoyment. In our research, to develop a system of agent-mediated facial communication, we apply Ifbot as the agent. If the facial expression mechanism of a robot similar to human mechanism, facial parameter extracted from human can be used as the facial expression control parameter of the robot. However, because Ifbot has a cartooned face structure to entertain people, and it differs from human face structure, this technique cannot be used. In this paper, we propose a method for mapping human face to the face of Ifbot using a neural network. We report on results of Ifbot's facial expression obtained with our method.

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When a human gives instructions to a robot, simple and intuitive instruction method is needed. In this research, we suggest an interface to give robot instructions by the movement of the human head. The intersection point between the table top and the extension line of the head direction is treated as the instruction point and the interface system where the robot follows the movement of the instruction point is constructed. Furthermore, the “Kansei”transfer function whose input is the instruction point and the output is the reference point of the robot motion is introduced. The human instructions are converted to smooth movements of the reference point using the “Kansei”transfer function. The parameter of the “Kansei”transfer function were experimentally examined for their influence on human emotion and sensitivity.

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Autonomous robots, which are becoming more widespread in Japanese homes and workplaces, perform such diverse functions as cleaning, or security patrolling. As people need to accept and understand these robots with which they may be in contact for extended periods, we studied Kansei in relation to the movements of robots. We observed the behavior of the people who participated in “a simulated workplace with robots experiment.”We developed six small simple robots of similar appearance but exhibited different behaviors in terms of their approaches to people; the combination of three types of movement and two types of wagging of the stick on the back. Each robot was evaluated on autonomism, Kansei, and affectiveness, anthropomorphism, safety and durability. According to the last evaluation after the session in three successive days, we concluded that approaching a person was interpreted as “cleverness”and wagging a “tail”as “charm.”The wag alone did not promote attachment but alleviated the aggression of the autonomous robot.

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We are developing a control system for a mechanical pet, AIBO, in which AIBO moves in a way that makes the user feel most comfortable as judged by his/her alpha waves. We constructed a real-time control system for customizing AIBO motion according to the user's measured alpha waves. In this paper, the results of the evaluation experiment of various new motions of AIBO for the constructed system were described. From the results, the tendencies of preferable motions of AIBO were clarified, which is useful for improvement of the system.

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We gave agents new feelings action rule which was the interaction of feelings called sympathy and alignment. And we observed an action as the crowd of agents and analyzed it. As a result, we understood that the agent' s action as the crowd performed the emergence action of “a set or disintegration”. In addition, the emergence action is assumed to a basic action characteristic of agent's crowd, we suggested and tested the method that behavior of the crowd controlled by using this. The first is a method of control crowd used a small agent of sensitivity. The second is a method of control crowd used a place of sensitivity. The first result, it is possible to control the action of concentration and dispersion. The second result, it is possible to control the action of concentration by how to give sensitivity of a place.

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To make KANSEI model for robotics, it is important to consider information of Deep KANSEI based on psychophysics. However, there has been no objective assessment scale for Deep KANSEI. In this paper, we investigate an objective assessment scale for Deep KANSEI based on psychological and physiological measurements. Firstly, we have evaluated a reproduced sound on Extra HI System M, which is able to highly faithfully reproduce information related with Deep KANSEI associated with music source. Secondly, on the same conditions, we have measured cardiac beat, facial skin temperature and brain wave, then, calculated and analyzed five physiological indexes (LF/ (LF+HF), ΔTmax, gradTmax, α wave, Fm θ wave) by principal component analysis (PCA). Finally, we have discussed relationship between assessment words and physiological characteristics for a sound reproduction. As a result, we have suggested time changing activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system as a possible index of an objective assessment scale for Deep KANSEI.

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In this paper, we propose a behavior generation model for entertainment robot whose behavior seems to be living. Oneproblem of common entertainment robots is hard to generate various behaviors, because behaviors of the robots are generally madeby simple rule-based algorithms. The problem causes that the simplicity of the movement of the robot lets a user get tired soon. Inthis paper, we propose a behavior generation model based on principles of respondent conditioning and operant conditioning inbehavior analysis. The model has desire parameters and neural network for choosing a behavior. The desire parameters usually riseslowly and decrease by a specific behavior. Because the neural network learns the behavior decreasing more desire parameters, themodel can select spontaneously behavior. The result of behavior generation simulation shows the model has the feature of theirconditionings.

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In this research, we try to develop a Kansei robot which can recognize color combination image that means “feelings about colors”. In that robot, the color image evaluation system, which has developed in our previous research, is installed. By using the system the robot can evaluate feelings about some color combinations and express these impressions in various kinds of key words, such as pretty, casual and chic. In this paper, we developed a Kansei robot recognizing feelings about colors of clothing which a person put on and expressing these feelings in some key words.

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This paper proposes a system for value-added information service using human-friendly machine-readable colorcode pictograms for safety and reliability. The proposed system called Zipic provides the following functions;(1) informationinfrastructure for food safety, (2) reliable certification for egg quality, and (3) promotion of dietary education for quality of life. Theresult of the questionnaire survey shows that consumers strongly rely on our Zipic system in shopping to receive value added egg anddietary information.

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For a smooth communication between human and robots, it is important to find out a development approach that can fully utilize the Deep KANSEI and keen sense of human. For this purpose, we have focused on the Deep KANSEI which evokes human deep emotions such as “atmospherics”, “feel of tension”and “texture of sound”, etc. In this paper, we investigate the relation between sound quality concerned with Deep KANSEI and jitter in digital audio systems. It is shown that the sound quality can be deteriorated by a small amount of jitter. When tracing the path of the jitter in the audio system for several jitter sources, we found that the jitter was suppressed by the PLL circuit, so that the jitter almost was not observed in the D/A converter block. Accordingly, we speculated that the influence of jitter was transformed to other shapes before or within the D/A converter block. One of the possibilities is that the influence of the jitter affects the sound quality, indirectly, via the power supply. We conducted a primary experiment to evaluate the sound quality when manipulating the power supply. The result was confirmed our speculation.

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In this paper, we propose a method that quantifies shape and color features for 3D object models. The method is based on a numerical description for rotation-invariant by measuring a distribution of vertex density by the angle and the distance of two vectors from a central point of an object to a pair of vertices and the distance between the central point and a vertex. But, it is necessary to quantify shape and color for 3D object models, because 3D object models have not only shape but also color data.
We analyzed the relationship between features and adjectives by each subject. We found that (1) the composite features of shape and color are better than the separate features of shape and color in terms of the relationship with adjectives, and (2) there are two kinds of subjects: shape-oriented and color-oriented subjects in terms of “warm-cold”.

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We developed a sound navigation system that can interact with movement using Kansei behavioral information. This system is based on unconscious human behavior, such as putting hands over ears while listening to something carefully. We collected candid videos of people to watch their behavior. Observing unconscious behavior is important for developing an idea of the flow of a tangible interactive system because data collected from observation can be applied to an emotion-based interface to control the system.
The sound navigation system was successfully developed into a sound scope Headphones to focus on the sound of a target instrument in an orchestra or jazz band. Furthermore, the target sound can be changed from one instrument to another by turning your head in the perceived direction of the target instrument. The Headphones were equipped with three sensors: a digital compass to detect head positions (when turning left and right), an acceleration sensor (when looking up and down), and a bend sensor for emphasizing the target sound when hands are put on ears.
We found the users, which ranged from young children to elderly people, successfully controlled the headphones and were satisfied with the easy and novel interaction between their movements and the sound.

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This paper provides a framework to generate robotic emotions during human-robot communication. The proposed method utilizes dynamic systems to make continuous information processing for emotion generation. The synchronization andentrainment of the dynamic system are used for information processing. The emotion generation system consists of discrimination, emotion and expression parts. This paper describes the design of the vector filed for the continuous discrimination of stimuli andemotion generation. We realize dynamic discrimination simply by using the proposed method. By introducing a conditioning theemotional response develops over time. The proposed method is examined by the simulations and experiments. The results show theeffectiveness of the continuous discrimination, the emotion generation and the expression.

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This paper describes gaze guidance with emotional motion of a head robot, called Kamin-FA 1. We propose to use not only the gaze control of the robot but also the facial expression combining with the head motion to guide a human being's gaze to thetarget. We provide the information of the gaze target intuitively to human based on the shared attention with the emotionalcommunication robot Kamin-FA1. The robot has a facial expression function using a curved surface display. The curved surfacedisplay is composed of a dome screen, a fish-eye lens and a projector. This technique generates a facial expression easily comparedwith other methods of mechanical facial expression. The robot has a neck mechanism to move the head. We show the effectivenessof this proposed method on gaze guidance as well as presentation of good or bad, safe or dangerous situation by the measurements ofhuman gaze movements and psychological experiments.

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Familiarity is one of the most important requirements for human symbiosis robots such as care service robot. Many studies have been made to provide robots with the familiarity by improving their appearance, facial expression and smoothness of the movement. This paper presents a new concept, called a “robot avatar.”A robot avatar is a small robot mounted on a main robot and equipped with minimum function to play some gestures according to every scene of the task execution of the main robot. By looking at the avatar, a user feels as if the avatar is controlling the main robot. Therefore a user is informed of the next behavior of the main robot by the avatar. A prototype of the avatar named CHIRIS is designed and installed to an intelligent service robot IRIS developed by the authors. IRIS can execute some simple tasks such as serving beverages by verbal request of the user. Utilizing CHIRIS, some psychological tests about the impression of IRIS during its task execution were carried out using video. Test results showed that CHIRIS is effective to give more familiar impression to the users.

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Abstract: Rules of nonverbal behavior that should be possessed by an anthropomorphic robot in order to be liked and loved by users were investigated from the perspective of ‘reciprocity of liking’ and ‘social comparison, ’ which are socio-psychological t endencies common to all humans. This study focused on the approach behavior of the robot towards a user, one of the simplest nonverbal behaviors indicative of liking. In Experiment 1, participants (n=36) performed a sham task near three small robots. Eachrobot was controlled to perform one of three activities: approach, semi-approach and random movement. Participants evaluated preand post task liking for each robot. The result indicated no difference in liking ratings. In Experiment 2, 22-pairs of participantsperformed the identical task and evaluation as in Experiment 1 in the presence a robot that selectively approached one member of thedyad and another robot that moved randomly. Evaluation of liking by the participants indicated that participants who wereapproached liked the robot and had greater expectation of attachment. However the participants who were not approached evaluatedthe robot negatively. These results suggest that a social comparison process is involved in the evaluation of liking and attachment forrobots.

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In this paper, it was investigated how the tactile perception was caused by the impressed pressure on the trunk. When the pressure impressing the low back and abdomen of the subjects by the experimental apparatus increased, they evaluated six adjective words “contact feeling”, “comfortable”, “support feeling”, “good pressure feeling”, “bad pressure feeling”and “pain”. And we investigated the relationship between the impressed pressure and the evaluated sensory values. From the result, it was found that they recognized three adjective words “contact feeling”, “bad pressure feeling”, and “pain”as the impressed pressure increased at all measurement parts of the trunk. When a certain pressure impressed the trunk, they recognized the support feeling on the erector muscle of spine and the abdominal rectus muscle, and the good pressure feeling on the latissimus dorsi muscle, the gluteus maximus muscle and the oblique abdominal muscle.

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Today, visual contents are increasingly used in various environments with the appearance of new digital AV equipments and spread of the broadband network. In addition there is a big difference in the display size, such as a cinema theater, TV, cellphone, and so on. In such a case, the difference in the impression will be a big problem in contents creation. In this paper, we investigate KANSEI evaluation of contents via three AV devices, i.e. cell-phone, plasma TV and projector, by changing camerawork. As the result, we reached the conclusion that impressions of visual contents changed between devices, and camera works should be tuned to fit characteristics of devices in order to give proper effect to viewers.

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Today, we can appreciate visual contents in various places with various display devices such as projectors, TVs and cellular pho nes. However, impressions from the same content may change in different conditions. A major factor that has an important effect upon impressions of contents is size of a screen. In order to avoid this problem, contents must be tuned for eachdisplay device. But this work will be a burden on content creators. In this paper, we propose camerawork control techniques to tunethe impressions of the CG contents and adapt to the viewing condition. We developed the CG platform that allows us adjusting thestrength of imprresions continuously by changing the single parameter, and also performed KANSEI evaluation to provethe effect ofour proposal. As the result of the evaluation, it was confirmed that camera works could be tuned to fit characteristics of devices byusing our proposed method

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This paper proposed a modified algorithm of grey structural modeling (GSM). In the conventional algorithm, a hierarchy parameter was sensitive to the hierarchical structure of a digraph, which makes it difficult to find out the proper structure of a digraph.In the proposal, the number of hierarchy could be directly determined by the K-means method with factor analysis support. Theimpression of twenty table lamps with ten adjective-word pairs was measured for nine university students by the semantic differentialtechnique and the impression data were analyzed by factor analysis, statistical graphical modeling, the conventional model and theproposal. As a result, the conventional algorithm was difficult to adjust the hierarchy because of the narrow range of the parameter, but the proposal was able to determine it. The proposal would contribute to establish a more valuable way for modeling kanseistructure even when there was little experience

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The general term of the malfunction condition which treating the information management system accompanied by VDT (Visual Display Terminals) is called technostress, and is one of the social problems. If a system is able to recommend an improvementof work environment and rest to a user, it will lead to reduction and prevention of fatigue of a user. However, the internal state offatigue of a worker is an uncertainty domain, and the system needs to estimate the data in which it is difficult to observe directlyusing observed value. In this paper, we deal with fatigue of the worker during VDT work, and construct a model using Bayesiannetworks. In order to obtain a better reasoning result, it is necessary to deal with VDT work information and user information such asboth psychological and physiological information, comprehensively.

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When a skin color was piled beneath colored plain weave fabrics, the effect of the yarn density of the fabrics on their visual impression was examined. The semantic differential method was applied for the evaluation of the impression with 12 pairs ofadjectives. The factor analysis for the evaluation data indicated that the evaluation score by the adjectives related to aestheticimpression declined worse when the skin color was more seen through the yarn gap of the fabric. The degree of the score decline washigher for the fabric with achromatic color, black and white, than chromatic, red, yellow, green and blue.

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