Misako Nambu

Effects of the agents’ appearance on people’s estimations about the agents’ abilities: Questionnaire investigations for liberal arts and informatics students

We conducted questionnaire investigations how liberal arts and informatics students estimated the agentspsila abilities on three different artificial agents that have different appearances; a PaPeRo human-like robot, an AIBO dog-like robot and a MindStorms machine-like robot. The results showed that 1) the PaPeRo robot received the better estimations from all students, 2) the AIBO and the MindStorms received the significantly better estimations from the informatics students whereas did the worse ones from the liberal arts students.

Dialog Support for Deafblind Persons by Conveying Backchannels through Vibration

We conducted an experiment using vibration system, by which a deafblind participant, communicating through an interpreter, could directly receive back-channel feedback from a conversational partner. Statistical analysis of the interaction structure showed that the back-channel vibration increased his turn-taking and interactivity of communication. And, from a qualitative analysis of video data, we found that the experience of receiving back-channel feedback caused a change in his haptic behavior in usual communication. Our results indicate that low mental workload and learnability of this vibration system allow deaf-blind persons to improve their communication.