Robotic Development on Behavior and Appearance

In current years, there has been much research and development of intelligent partner robots that can interact with humans in daily life, such as Honda ASIMO and Sony AIBO. Communications between the humans and the robots is emphasized in contrast to industrial robots performing specialized tasks. The intelligence of the robot is a subjective phenomenon that emerges during human-robot interaction. It is indispensable to reveal a principle of human-human and human-robot communication, that is, a principle of interaction for developing a partner robot and realizing its intelligence.

Some researchers have tackled this problem. For instance, Kanda and Scheeff evaluated how the behavior of their robots affects human-robot interaction by observing their interaction. These works have revealed gradually the effects of robot behavior on human-robot interaction. There is a possibility that robotic appearance distort our interpretation of its behavior. The appearance of the robot is one of its functions essentially; therefore the effect of appearance must be evaluated independently. It is generally difficult to isolate the effects of the behavior of robot. One way to discriminate is developing a robot whose appearance is same as humans.

To state the problem of the research, to tackle a fundamental problem of a robot behavior and appearance. It forms a fundamental hypothesis about the effect of a robot behavior and appearance using existing knowledge gained from practical or research experience. This research currently is in progress and only preliminary experimental results have been obtained.

The goal is to create a design methodology of robot appearance and behavior robot named “Robovie”. It is possible that the result depend on the appearance of Robovie because its robotic appearance influences the interaction.

There is a bottom-up approach to tackle this behavior versus appearance problem, in which the interaction is evaluated while enhancing incrementally the appearance or behavior of the robot. There is a top-down approach too, in which build initially a robot which has the same appearance and motion as humans and evaluate the interaction while removing some aspect of appearance or behavior.