Kazuki Kobayashi

Smoothing human-robot speech interactions by using a blinking-light as subtle expression

Speech overlaps, undesired collisions of utterances between systems and users, harm smooth communication and degrade the usability of systems. We propose a method to enable smooth speech interactions between a user and a robot, which enables subtle expressions by the robot in the form of a blinking LED attached to its chest. In concrete terms, we show that, by blinking an LED from the end of the users speech until the robots speech, the number of undesirable repetitions, which are responsible for speech overlaps, decreases, while that of desirable repetitions increases. In experiments, participants played a last-and-first game with the robot. The experimental results suggest that the blinking-light can prevent speech overlaps between a user and a robot, speed up dialogues, and improve users impressions.

Development of a UV laser-induced fluorescence lidar for monitoring blue-green algae in Lake Suwa.

We developed a UV (355xa0nm) laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) lidar for monitoring the real-time status of blue-green algae. Since the fluorescence spectrum of blue-green algae excited by 355xa0nm showed the specific fluorescence at 650xa0nm, the lidar was designed to be able to detect the 650xa0nm fluorescence as a surveillance method for the algae. The usefulness was confirmed by observation at Lake Suwa over four years (2005-2008). The detection limit of the LIF lidar was 16.65xa0mg/L for the blue-green algae, which is the range of concentrations in the safe level set by the World Health Organization.

Action Sloping as a Way for Users to Notice a Robot's Function

This paper focuses on the problem that will arise in the near future from multi-function robots. Users will have to read thick operation manuals to use them. If users can use these robots without reading difficult manuals, it will improve user efficiency. We then proposed action sloping as a way for users to naturally recognize a robots function. It provides the robots with gradual feedback signals when the user performs given actions. By changing the intensity of the feedback signal according to his/her action, it encourages him/her to perform an action that will trigger the robots function. In our experiments, we made three kinds of feedback behaviors according to Action Sloping and one non-feedback behavior as the control condition. The participants of the experiment tried to find a robots function and the latencies to first finding the triggered action were measured. An analysis of the latencies show ed the difference between the sound feedback group by action sloping and the control group. This result showed that the effectiveness of action sloping was partially supported.

Peripheral agent: implementation of peripheral cognition technology

Information notification on a display for e-mail arrival, micro-blog updates, and application updates is becoming increasingly important. We propose a novel information notification method, the peripheral agent (PA) as an implementation of peripheral cognition technology (PCT) that uses the human cognitive properties that a human does not recognize subtle changes in a peripheral area of cognition when he/she concentrates on a task and that he/she automatically recognizes the changes when not concentrating on the task. By only setting a PA in the peripheral area, a user automatically and easily accepts the notification only when his/her concentration breaks. We conducted two experiments to investigate a VFN area and evaluate the effectiveness of PAs.

Extending Commands Embedded in Actions for Human-Robot Cooperative Tasks

In this paper, we propose a novel method to control a robot without robot manipulation. Users do not need to precisely manipulate the robot and to learn the manipulation method. The proposed method can send commands to a robot by using a human action sequence that achieves their own task. In order to enable the robot to achieve tasks, we introduce a keep-based interaction in which a human keeps an action in the sequence for a certain period. The advantages of our method are efficiency improved by not requiring additional human actions, and functionality to enable a robot to perform further actions. We consider that the efficiency is supported by users’ physical workloads and cognitive loads. Users’ physical workloads would not be increased because the proposed method does not require additional human actions. However, the effect of the proposed method on users’ cognitive loads is unknown. We applied the method to a desktop sweeping task by a human and a small mobile robot, and conducted an experiment with participants to measure users’ cognitive loads in a cooperative sweeping task. As a result, we found that the proposed method had a lower cognitive load than a typical conventional method.

Entrainment in Human-Agent Text Communication

Non-verbal information such as utterance speed and switching pause create an impression of the speaker. If intelligent agents could handle such non-verbal information properly, the quality of interactions between agents and human users would improve. Entrainment is a phenomenon in which brainwave synchronization is established by means of periodic stimulus. It is reported that non-verbal information expressed by an individual entrains that expressed by another in voice communication. We have interest in how an agent can affect people though entraining the non-verbal information in text communication. Text is much easier for agents to handle than voice. Through experiments, we show that the utterance speed of an agent can entrain the duration of switching pauses used by human subjects.

Smoothing human-robot speech interaction with blinking-light expressions

We propose a method to enable smooth speech interactions between a user and a robot. Our method is based on subtle expression whereby a robot blinks a small LED attached to its chest. We performed experiments in which participants played a last-and-first games and counted the number of repetitions made by the participants and analyzed their impression of the game and the robot. The experimental results suggested that the blinking-light could prevent utterance collisions between a user and a robot and could create familiar and attentive impressions about the game on users.

Shape changing device for notification

In this paper, we describe a notification method with peripheral cognition technology that uses a human cognitive characteristic. The method achieves notification without interrupting users primary tasks. We developed a shape changing device that change its shape to notify the arrival of information. Such behavior enables a user to easily find and accept notifications without interruption when their attention on the primary task decreases. The result of an experiment showed that the successful notification rate was 45.5%.

Motion Overlap for a Mobile Robot to Express its Mind

This paper discusses how a mobile robot may express itself to get help from users in a cooperative task. We focus on a situation in which a robot expresses its state of mind to get a user to lend it help. The design we propose, called motion overlap (MO), enables a robot to express human-like behavior in communicating with users. We reasoned that human-like behavior in a robot could help the user to understand its state of mind. We designed a small sweeping robot based on MO that conducts back and forth movement ,a nd compared its MO expression in experiments with other nonverbal communication, i.e., buzzers and blinking LEDs. We found that the MO expression encouraged most users to help the robot. Differences among results obtained for the three types of expression were statistically significant, and results demonstrate that MO has potential in the design of robots for the home.

Response Times when Interpreting Artificial Subtle Expressions are Shorter than with Human-like Speech Sounds

Artificial subtle expressions (ASEs) are machine-like expressions used to convey a systems confidence level to users intuitively. In this paper, we focus on the cognitive loads of users in interpreting ASEs in this study. Specifically, we assume that a shorter response time indicates less cognitive load, and we hypothesize that users will show a shorter response time when interpreting ASEs compared with speech sounds. We succeeded in verifying our hypothesis in a web-based investigation done to comprehend participants cognitive loads by measuring their response times in interpreting ASEs and speeches.