Award type：Award from Japanese society, conference, symposium, etc.  Country：Japan

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Award type：Award from international society, conference, symposium, etc. 

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)  

Autonomous dialogue agents are expected to be applied in multi-party dialogue where three or more agents or people converse. In multi-party dialogue, autonomous dialogue agents that perform one-tomany dialogue with interlocutors assembled for specific purposes, such as communities, are useful, because these agents can be applied to provide information and entertainment to communities. For such applications, autonomous dialogue agents need to be acceptable and attractive to community members, but no method has been established to achieve this. Therefore, we aim to realize a ‘‘Community-Oriented Agent’’ (COA) that is acceptable and attractive to community members through dialogue.We proposed a method for building an autonomous dialogue function of COA, which consists of two essential steps: 1) Collect dialogue examples among the community members by creating a situation in which multiple members of the community converse with other members through operating the agent; 2) Build the agent’s autonomous dialogue function by utilizing the collected examples. To validate this method, we developed a ‘‘COAsystem’’ to implement the approach and conducted the experiment. In the experiment, using this system, we collected actual dialogue examples among community members, and then asked the members to evaluate the autonomous dialogue agents built using these examples. The results showed that the members evaluated an autonomous dialogue agent built using dialogue examples collected within their community as acceptable and attractive, but it was also shown that it is difficult to build such an agent if there are not enough participants in the dialogue when collecting dialogue examples.

DOI： 10.1109/access.2025.3575708

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：Springer  

As an application of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, VR programs have been proposed to simulate on-site experiences, such as practical training, in a virtual environment. To make users feel as if they are actually experiencing these activities in the virtual environment, it is important to design the program to increase the sense of body ownership and presence. However, in practical applications of such VR programs, little is known about the negative effects of using consumer-grade VR devices with limited tracking capabilities on body ownership and presence, and about methods to mitigate these effects. Limitations in tracking capabilities can cause discrepancies in the positional alignment of body parts between the user and their avatar, leading to incongruence between visual information and tactile feedback when users touch their own bodies. Developing methods to mitigate the effects of such inconsistent self-touch is essential for making VR programs accessible at the consumer level. The purpose of this study is to investigate the negative effects of incongruent self-touch on the sense of body ownership and presence and to develop a novel method to mitigate these effects by using visual effects to blur the areas where self-touch occurs. The results of the preliminary experiment suggest that VR devices with low tracking capabilities negatively effect the quality of the VR program experience, and the proposed method utilizing visual effects to mitigate this impact has shown potential effectiveness.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-031-93715-6_20

Open Access

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Other Link： https://hdl.handle.net/2237/0002012925

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

Introduction: In recent years, information conveyance through conversation using agents such as robots and avatars has gained attention. Among them, conversation by two agents has been shown to encourage effective information conveyance. Previous studies have also demonstrated that incorporating subjective information, such as emotions, into conversations enhances this effect. Therefore, a medium for information conveyance involving two autonomous agents and including subjective information is expected to be effective.

Methods: In this study, such a medium was implemented, and the conditions necessary for it to convey information continuously were investigated. Objective information was defined as the content of existing news, and subjective information was defined as the preference toward the news. A frame structure was used for organizing objective information, and a network structure was used for subjective information. A method was developed to autonomously obtain both types of information. This knowledge was then distributed to two agents, who exchanged it and attempted to understand each other through conversation.

Results: Experiments were conducted to determine whether the subjective information obtained autonomously by the agents was as natural and consistent as that of humans. Further experiments examined the conditions for enabling continuous information conveyance using the medium.

Discussion: The results indicated that conveying important information first and using robots rather than text were effective strategies for maintaining continuous information conveyance.

DOI： 10.3389/frobt.2025.1417488

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

In this study, we propose an overall self-instructional training support system and tested the effectiveness of a self-instructional text presentation interface using a speech bubble. While the automated generation of self-instructional texts could make the training more accessible, previous research shows that if the texts are not self-created, the effectiveness of the training decreases. To overcome this, we design an interface that displays a real-time video of the user’s face with superimposed speech bubbles containing self-instructional text. Through online experiments, we demonstrated that the interface enhances users’ internalization of the generated text, potentially improving the effectiveness of computer-assisted self-instructional training.

DOI： 10.11184/his.27.1_43

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：ACM  

Teleoperated social robots have been widely studied and employed, yet their operation interfaces provide limited information to the operator, causing difficulties in grasping the dialogue situation compared to face-to-face interactions. Particularly with conventional interfaces, operators face challenges with vocal adaptation due to the inability to assess the distance between the robot and the interlocutor. Consequently, operators struggle to determine the appropriate volume level for clear communication, leading to insecurity about their vocalization’s effectiveness. In this study, we propose a novel approach to address this issue: a voice volume gauge that enables operators to adjust their voice volume by displaying the difference between their current volume and the estimated optimal volume on the interface. We implemented the gauge and conducted a subjective evaluation experiment, which demonstrated no usability concerns for operators and a reduction in their insecurity levels. Furthermore, preliminary objective evaluation results based on speech analysis suggest that utilizing the gauge may bring operators’ vocalizations closer to those in face-to-face dialogues. The contribution of this paper lies in providing a simple interface design method to aid in solving the vocal adaptation problem for teleoperated robot applications.

DOI： 10.1145/3687272.3688313

Open Access

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Other Link： https://hdl.handle.net/2237/0002011728

Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Intelligent Informatics  

As research and applications of operated social robots continue to advance, a para-operated social robot has also been proposed, in which the robot and its operator exist in the same space, and the robot, operator, and interlocutor can interact face-to-face. Contributing to the promotion of human-human interaction by such robots, we considered that the operator could improve their interpersonal impression by making the robot say favorable utterances through operation during the dialog. This paper reports the results from the online video survey conducted to investigate the following hypothesis considering the robot-operator distance; Operator’s interpersonal impression is improved by making the robot say favorable utterances through operating. The results of the surveys conducted at different distances between the robot and the operator show that the impression of the operator was improved by the robot’s favorable humorous utterances when they are in close, but not when they are far apart. We consider that the findings contribute to the potential of dialog promotion by para-operated robots and suggest the importance of focusing on the positional relationship factor in the influence of robots on human-human relationships.

DOI： 10.3156/jsoft.36.4_695

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

Dialogue robots powered by large language models can generate advanced utterances. However, the interaction performance is not yet perfect, and the robots sometimes cause problems during interactions. In this study, to detect anomalies in human-robot interactions, we created a dataset and constructed anomaly detection models. For the dataset creation, we collected videos of human-robot interactions in a framework where humans intervene when a dialogue breakdown occurs and labeled the scenes where humans intervened as anomalies. Using this dataset, we built classification models and deep metric learning models utilizing encoders for video, audio, and multimodal information. The results showed that we could successfully train the models and achieve an accuracy and F1-score of over 80%. The performance of the deep metric learning models surpassed that of the classification models, thus demonstrating the importance of separating the differences between classes. We also clarified the importance of audio information.

DOI： 10.1109/ro-man60168.2024.10731184

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Authorship：Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

The demand for therapeutic robots to alleviate mental health problems is growing. Studies have shown that people’s mental health improves when they are touched. Consequently, therapeutic robots are designed to alleviate stress through robot’s autonomous touch. However, robot’s autonomous touch can sometimes cause discomfort to recipients. This paper proposes a semi-autonomous touch method that merges robot’s autonomous touch with user-operated touch to mitigate discomfort while maintaining the sensation of being touched by another person. We conducted an experiment involving 24 participants who were touched on the neck by robots under three conditions: robot’s autonomous touch, user-operated touch, and the proposed semi-autonomous touch method condition. Additionally, the study investigated participants’ impressions of the robot in each condition. The results showed that semi-autonomous touch condition mitigated discomfort more effectively compared with the robot’s autonomous touch method condition. It also enhanced the feeling of being touched by another person entity and suppressed interaction boredom compared with the user-operated touch method condition. Participants reported higher trustworthiness and perceived friendliness in robots utilizing the semi-autonomous touch method compared to those with autonomous touch method condition. These findings indicate that robots featuring the proposed semi-autonomous touch method can provide a comforting experience, leveraging the therapeutic benefits of being touched by another person, and underscore their potential in mental health applications.

DOI： 10.1038/s41598-024-67964-0

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

Interactive systems that enable people to easily access mental health care in their daily lives are being studied. Self-instruction training, which is a kind of cognitive-behavioral therapy, is expected to be effective for general-purpose mental health care, but the difficulty for users to create self-instructional texts by themselves has hindered its widespread use. Furthermore, it is not sufficient to simply use a computer-assisted method for the training in which the computer automatically generates the self-instructional texts. This is because previous studies have shown that users do not feel self-instructional texts that are not created by themselves are their thoughts, and consequently cannot internalize the content of the texts, reducing the effectiveness of the training. In this study, we focused on the interface design that facilitates users to internalize automatically generated self-instructional texts, toward the realization of a self-instructional training support system. We proposed an interface that shows the real-time captured video of a user's face like a mirror and superimposes a speech bubble containing a self-instructional text to be connected to the user's face and confirmed the interface facilitates the user's internalization of the text through online experiments. The contribution of this paper is to provide a novel interface design for computer-assisted self-instructional training.

DOI： 10.1109/compsac61105.2024.00334

Open Access

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Other Link： https://hdl.handle.net/2237/0002011511

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：ACM  

In recent years, a framework of parallel conversations has been proposed to facilitate efficient conversations through cooperation between humans and dialogue systems. This approach aims to enable simultaneous conversations with multiple users by enabling the system to handle basic conversation and human operators to intervene when problems arise in the system’s conversation. Previous studies on parallel conversations have primarily focused on delegating simple exchanges such as greetings and acknowledgments to the system, with humans taking over for more complex interactions like providing guidance. Recent advancements in large language models may change this situation, enabling dialogue systems to engage in more advanced interactions. In this study, to examine which interventions will be made when large language models are utilized, we placed six dialogue robots based on large language models in an actual facility and conducted a field experiment involving parallel conversations for about a month. Our analysis of the collected data on dialogues and interventions showed that the most frequent interventions were made for supporting interactions when the system failed to react to the user utterances, indicating the limitations of using large language models alone and clarifying our next steps for facilitating smoother parallel conversations.

DOI： 10.1145/3623809.3623863

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：ACM  

Dialogue systems are widely utilized in chatbots and call centers. However, it is often difficult for such systems to deliver fully autonomous dialogue. For users to have a better dialogue experience, a framework for human-system collaborative dialogue is proposed in which a human operator takes over the dialogue when needed, engaging in conversation with the user instead of the system (we call this process intervention). Operators join the dialogue in the middle; therefore, it is believed that dialogue summarization can be helpful for interventions. However, it is currently unclear whether dialogue summarization is actually useful. Therefore, in this study, we aim to investigate the usefulness of dialogue summaries for interventions through a field experiment conducted at an actual facility combining an aquarium and a zoo. The results of the field experiment revealed that dialogue summaries were more useful for intervention than dialogue history. Furthermore, we found no differences in the word categories included in the operator utterances during interventions irrespective of whether the dialogue history or dialogue format summary was presented to the operators, suggesting that dialogue format summary has content similar to that of dialogue history but improves the usefulness in intervention.

DOI： 10.1145/3623809.3623889

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Nature Portfolio  

Studies on social robots that can communicate with humans are increasingly important. In particular, semi-autonomous robots have shown potential for practical applications in which robot autonomy and human teleoperation are jointly used to accomplish difficult tasks. However, it is unknown how the attitude represented in the autonomous behavior of the robots affects teleoperators. Previous studies reported that when humans play a particular role, their attitudes align with that role. The teleoperators of semi-autonomous robots also play the role given to the robots and may assimilate their autonomous expression. We hypothesized that the attitude of teleoperators may align with that of robots through teleoperation. To verify this, we conducted an experiment with conditions under which a participant operated a part of the body of an android robot that autonomously expressed a preferential attitude toward a painting and a condition under which they did not. Experimental results demonstrated that the preferential attitude of participants who teleoperated the android aligned statistically significantly more with that of the robot in comparison to those who did not teleoperate it, thereby supporting our hypothesis. This finding is novel regarding attitude change in teleoperators of semi-autonomous robots and can support the implementation of effective human-robot collaboration systems.

DOI： 10.1038/s41598-022-13829-3

Open Access

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Human Interface Society  

While the potential of adopting robots interacting with humans in stores was shown in the previous studies, however robots that can work with people in stores and provide services have not taken root in society yet. In this paper, we realized an android robot which can help the duties of the salespersons at a boutique as well as provide mental support by cooperating with them. We considered that it is important for such robots to not only serve the customers but also support the salespersons. Therefore, we first interviewed salespersons at a boutique to find out what they expect from the robot. The result of the survey showed that they mainly expect three points from the robot: 1) reducing the workload of salesperson, 2) providing mental support for salesperson, and 3) assisting salesperson to establish a good relationship with the customer. To deal with these issues, we implemented an onsite-operated android. Through an 11-day field experiment in a boutique, in which the salespersons used the android, it was observed that the android could contribute to the salespersons in some situation of the work, and more possibilities for the android to contribute to the salespersons in some different aspects was investigated.

DOI： 10.11184/his.22.3_275

CiNii Research

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence  

In this study, we developed and evaluated a dialogue system which enables an android robot to have a chat with users on Niconico Live provided by Dwango Co., Ltd. which is a live streaming service. In Niconico Live, broadcasters can talk to users who write comments displayed on the video stream. Therefore, by using Niconico Live chat, we eliminated speech recognition errors which can occur during speech conversations. In addition, the dialogue system can keep consistency of conversation by selecting the comment to which it can correctly respond because many comments are shown simultaneously on the video stream. The dialogue system was designed as a retrieval-based one which finds the appropriate response to user's utterance from a dialogue corpus. Therefore, we collected a dialogue corpus containing 4,460 pairs of comments and robot responses by teleoperating the android robot talking with users, as a first step. In the next step, we completed the dialogue system on Niconico Live integrating the dialogue corpus into it. To evaluate the performance of the dialogue system, we recorded the conversation between the android and users while running the designed system. After that, we showed the recorded conversation to evaluators and asked them how they feel about the naturalness and consistency of the conversation. Results of the experiment indicate that Niconico Live users perceived the responses of the dialogue system to be natural and found the chat with the android entertaining. Through this study, we demonstrated the applicability of the dialogue system on Niconico Live. However, it is difficult to discuss its effectiveness when applying it to other situations or other communication media such as a humanoid robot or a virtual agent. Therefore, as a future work, conducting a comparative experiment might lead to better understanding of the effectiveness of the dialogue system for androids.

DOI： 10.1527/tjsai.DSH-G

CiNii Research

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (international conference)   Publisher：ACM  

Educational robots prove effective in children’s learning, but designing robots that support parent-child dialogue during home learning remains unclear. This study proposes a semi-autonomous para-operated robot that parents partially control while engaging with their child. We hypothesized that unlike autonomous robots which may reduce parental engagement [1], this approach would increase parental involvement through active operation. We conducted an experiment with parent-child pairs comparing no robot, autonomous robot, and the proposed semi-autonomous robot conditions. Results showed the proposed robot significantly increased parental utterances without increasing parental burden, demonstrating its effectiveness in facilitating parent-child home learning dialogue.

DOI： 10.1145/3765766.3765877

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (international conference)   Publisher：ACM  

In personality trait analysis, self-evaluation through questionnaire methods is widely used due to ease of implementation and analysis. However, respondents can easily provide false evaluation scores based on their intentions. This study proposes a method to obtain truthful evaluation scores from dialogue records through dialogue simulation with autonomous agents for questionnaire items. Since dialogue requires immediate responses and detailed explanations, we hypothesized this method would be less prone to deception compared to traditional questionnaire methods. We developed a comprehensive system using Large Language Models that handles everything from setting dialogue situations based on questionnaire items to conducting dialogues with autonomous agents, and automatically evaluating dialogue records. In preliminary experiments, we found that evaluation scores from the proposed method when participants were prompted to lie were close to truthful questionnaire responses when participants were prompted to answer truthfully. These findings suggest the effectiveness of psychological measurement through dialogue with autonomous agents.

DOI： 10.1145/3765766.3765823

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：日本バーチャルリアリティ学会  

バーチャルリアリティ体験において、ユーザとアバタの身体部位にずれが生じると、自己接触時に視覚と触覚の不整合が発生し、身体所有感の低下が懸念される。本研究では、ずれが発生した部位にブラー効果を適用することで不整合の知覚を低減する手法を開発し、その有効性を検証した。実験により、提案手法が不整合の悪影響を軽減し、身体所有感の維持に寄与することを確認した。

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Other Link： https://conference.vrsj.org/ac2025/program/3C1.html

Authorship：Lead author   Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：情報処理学会 エンタテインメントコンピューティング研究会  

漫才には鑑賞だけでなく，実演して笑いを取る楽しさもあるが，人が漫才を演じることは難しい．本研究では，漫才のネタの台詞や演じ方（間・抑揚・動作など）をカラオケのように視覚的に提示して，2 人組の漫才実演をリアルタイムに支援する漫才カラオケを提案する．これにより，ユーザは楽しく漫才を演じられ，聴衆もその漫才を見て楽しめる体験の創出を目指す．プロトタイピングとユーザスタディを通じて，ユーザが負担なく楽しみながら，聴衆にとっても楽しめる漫才を実演できるインタフェースを開発した．

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Other Link： https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS-UzKOM-20

Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：一般社団法人 人工知能学会  

遠隔操作型対話ロボットは、対話業務の効率化を実現する手段として注目を集めている。しかし長時間の操作においては、操作者は単調さや閑暇に起因する退屈さを感じ、タスクへのモチベーションが低下してしまう課題がある。そこで本研究では、操作者が操作対象のロボットと対話しながらタスクに従事することで、操作者の退屈感を低減する手法を提案する。過去の研究では、同様のアプローチをルールベースの対話機能により実現し、操作者のストレス緩和を目指した例がある。本研究の目的は、(1)長時間利用に耐える柔軟な対話が可能な、大規模言語モデルを用いた生成的対話機能を備えた操作システムの実現と、(2)操作者とロボットとの対話による退屈感低減効果の検証である。参加者1人あたりロボットを5時間操作してもらう14日間のフィールド実験の結果、実装したシステムにより操作者の退屈感が有意に低減することが示された。よって、操作者とロボットの対話は長時間操作における操作者の退屈感を軽減し、タスクへの従事モチベーションの維持に寄与することが示唆された。本稿は、遠隔操作型対話ロボットの実用における操作者の快適性向上のための知見を提供する。

DOI： 10.11517/pjsai.JSAI2025.0_3Q6GS802

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：一般社団法人 人工知能学会  

人の性格特性の分析において，実施や分析の容易さから質問紙法による自己評価が広く用いられている．しかし，質問紙法では，質問項目が抽象的で回答が困難な場合があり，先行研究においても自己評価による分析結果の信頼性の低さが指摘されている．そこで本研究では，質問紙法において被分析者が評定しづらい質問項目に対して，対話シミュレーションを通じた行動から分析できる手法を提案する．提案手法では，質問項目から具体的な対話状況を設定し，被分析者と自律エージェントの対話を自動で分析して評定値を得る．これにより，自己評定では正確な分析が困難であった質問項目に観察法を適用することで，具体的な行動に基づく分析結果を低コストで得ることができると考えた．実装には，大規模言語モデルを活用し，対話状況の設定から自動評定までを一貫して行うシステムを開発した．予備実験では，第三者評定と提案手法による評定結果を比較し，提案手法の妥当性を検証した．

DOI： 10.11517/pjsai.JSAI2025.0_2D5GS903

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：言語処理学会  

本研究では，人とロボットのインタラクションにおいて生じる異常を自動で検出するモデルを構築することを目的とし，データセットの作成および異常検出モデルの構築を行った．具体的には，人とロボットのインタラクションに問題が生じた際に人間が介入する複数人同時対話の枠組みにおいて収集されたインタラクション映像に対して，正常か異常かを人手でアノテーションすることでデータセットを作成した．そして，作成したデータセットを用いて分類モデルを学習することで異常検出モデルを構築した．さらに，複数人同時対話の枠組みを検証する実証実験を実施し，モデルの検出結果をアラートとして提示することがオペレータの介入に有用であることを確認した．

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)  

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)  

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (international conference)   Publisher：ACM  

Cybernetic avatars (CAs), robots or CG agents operated remotely by humans, are increasingly used for remote communication, offering potential for applications such as telework. However, the usability of these systems, particularly regarding the operator’s sense of agency (SoA) and sense of ownership (SoO), remains underexplored. We conducted an experiment using a commercially employed CA system. The results showed that operators can experience SoA and SoO over on-screen CG avatars, supporting the system’s basic usability. Additionally, the results suggest that limiting operator hand movements might better maintain SoA in environments with a delay in the reflection of operators’ movement on CAs. These findings have preliminary implications for CA system usage, highlighting the need to consider trade-offs between operation and system responsiveness.

DOI： 10.1145/3687272.3690882

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Other Link： https://hdl.handle.net/2237/0002011729

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (international conference)   Publisher：ACM  

Various customer service robots’ teleoperation interfaces (I/Fs) have been developed for human-robot collaboration. However, a previous study has indicated a lack of operator enjoyment. This study aims to design an I/F that elicits operator enjoyment and identifies the factors that contribute to this enjoyment. We developed two I/Fs: a high degree of freedom I/F and a gradual flexibility degree of freedom I/F based on gamification to elicit operator enjoyment. Using these I/Fs, we conducted a field study in a real shopping mall to investigate the operators’ experiences. As a result, the operators in this experiment greatly enjoyed using our I/Fs. The results showed that our I/Fs could elicit operator enjoyment with the following three I/F factors suggested as potentially important design guidelines: ease of use through anonymity, moderate restriction of freedom, and sharing experiences with a group of operators.

DOI： 10.1145/3687272.3690883

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Other Link： https://hdl.handle.net/2237/0002011730

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (international conference)   Publisher：ACM  

This study investigates the effects of both operator and avatar gender on the perceived ease of communication and creepiness of the avatars. Utilizing a mixed-methods 2 by 2 approach (male operator, female operator; male avatar, female avatar), we conducted an experiment involving 148 participants. The results indicate significant variations in perceived avatar impressions influenced by the gender alignment between the operator and the avatar. Specifically, female-operator-female-avatar group rated as the easiest to talk to, most interesting and least in the creepiness metric. These results suggest that for low-friction conversational encounters using female-operator-female-avatars might be most suitable.

DOI： 10.1145/3687272.3690891

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Other Link： https://hdl.handle.net/2237/0002011731

Language：English  

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：IPSJ Special Interest Group on Entertainment Computing  

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence  

A semi-autonomous robot is being researched and applied, in which the robot's autonomy and human operation cooperate to accomplish practical tasks. Because such robots are both autonomous and operability, when an operator operates the robot, they may feel as if they are operating a tool that serves as their other self (sense of operation), while at the same time, they may feel as if they are giving direction to another person, the agent (sense of direction). However, the factors to make a difference in how the operator feels senses of operation and direction are not clear, and there is a lack of understanding of how this difference affects cooperation with the robot. In this study, we clarified whether an operator feels a sense of operation or direction changes depending on the degrees of abstractness of the operation method, and that which sense is preferred depends on an operator and task content. Therefore, the results of this paper suggest the importance of interaction design between an operator and the robot, which focuses on how an operator feels when operating the robot, for the application of semi-autonomous robots.

DOI： 10.11517/pjsai.JSAI2024.0_3T5OS6b02

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：The Association for Natural Language Processing  

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)  

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)  

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)  

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (international conference)   Publisher：ACM  

While research and applications of operated social robots that can be used as operators’ avatars have been conducted, a para-operated social robot has also been proposed, in which the robot and its operator exist in the same space, and the operator, robot, and interlocutor can interact with each other. From the findings of human-human-robot interaction research, it is known that the robot’s behavior influences the interpersonal relationships of the people involved in the dialog. However, there is no knowledge of how the operator is perceived by the interlocutor when the operations by the operator are unveiled. This paper reports preliminary results from two online surveys conducted to investigate the following question considering the robot-operator distance; Does the impression of the operator improve in unveiled para-operation when the operator operates the robot and has it say favorable utterances? The results of the two video surveys conducted at different distances between the robot and the operator show that the impression of the operator was improved by the robot’s favorable humorous utterances when the distance was close, but not when the distance was further apart. We consider that the findings contribute to the potential application of unveiled para-operated robots and suggest the importance of considering the distance factor in the influence of robots on human-human relationships.

DOI： 10.1145/3623809.3623924

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：Japanese Cognitive Science Society  

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)  

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence  

A semi-autonomous robot is becoming important because it can accomplish practical tasks through collaboration between the robot’s autonomy and human operation. However, it is still unclear how a semi-autonomous robot is recognized by its operator who collaborates with it, and understanding this point is critical for application of the robot.For example, the attribution of responsibility for task failure or success may be affected depending on whether an operator treats the robot as a sidekick or a mere tool.In this study, we developed a psychological scale to measure whether an operator feels a sense of operation (tool-likeness) or direction (human-likeness) when they command it. Then, we conducted the experiment to investigate the hypothesis that the degrees of abstractness of the command affect the operator's recognition of a semi-autonomous robot. The results showed that high and low abstractness tended to evoke a sense of direction and operation, respectively.

DOI： 10.11517/pjsai.JSAI2023.0_3I5OS4c04

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence  

An autonomous dialogue agent is expected to engage in live chat like Virtual YouTubers or to give classes and lectures in application of one-to-many dialogue where the agent interacts with multiple interlocutors forming a community. In one-to-one dialogue, the effectiveness has been shown that an agent interacts with its interlocutor adapting to their characteristics. However, in one-to-many dialogue with community members, no method has been established to realize an agent with the dialogue ability adapted to the characteristics of the community. In this study, we proposed a two-step method to build such an agent: (1) collecting dialogue examples from chat in which community members operate an agent to interact with the other members, (2) developing the agent by using these examples. We conducted experiments to verify this method with our developed system enabling dialogue examples collection and agent implementation. The results suggested that it is possible to collect dialogue examples that reflect the characteristics of a community and to realize an agent capable of dialogue adapted to the characteristics.

DOI： 10.11517/pjsai.JSAI2023.0_2K4GS903

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Book review, literature introduction, etc.   Publisher：The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence  

DOI： 10.11517/jjsai.38.1_46

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Book review, literature introduction, etc.   Publisher：Human Interface Society  

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：English   Publisher：Symbiotic Intelligent Systems Research Center  

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper, summary (national, other academic conference)   Publisher：The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence  

DOI： 10.11517/pjsai.JSAI2017.0_2N23

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