Shoichi Egawa

A laughing-driven pupil response system for inducing empathy

Laughing response plays an important role in supporting human interaction and communication, and enhances empathy by sharing laughter each other. Therefore, in order to develop communication systems which enhance empathy, it is desired to design the media representation using the pupil response which is related to affective response such as pleasure-unpleasure. In this paper, we aim to enhance empathy during human and robot interaction and communication, and develop a pupil response system for inducing empathy by laughing response using hemispherical display. In addition, we evaluate the pupil response with the laughing response by using the developed system. The results demonstrate that the dilated pupil response with laughing response is effective for enhancing empathy.

Proposal of a pupil response model synchronized with burst-pause of utterance based on the heat conduction equation

In our previous study, we performed the analysis of pupil response during his or her utterance by using a pupil measurement device and demonstrated that speakers pupil response dilates with synchronization to the burst-pause of utterance. In addition, we developed a pupil response robot called “Pupiloid” that generates the pupil response with mechanical structure, and demonstrated that the pupil response is effective to express own affect. In this paper, in order to enhance affective conveyance, we propose a pupil response model synchronized with burst-pause of utterance based on the heat conduction equation in human-robot interaction. This model estimates the degree of affective conveyance and generates the pupil response based on the estimated value.

A speech-driven pupil response robot synchronized with burst-pause of utterance

We have developed a pupil response robot called, “Pupiloid,” that generates pupil responses that are closely related to human emotions as well as gaze. Pupiloid can express human-like pupil response by using a mechanism that rotates feathers sterically. In this study, in order to create a smooth interaction between human and robot, we performed an analysis of pupil response during utterance by using a pupil measurement device. Based on the results, we propose a method in which the robots pupil is dilated by being synchronized with the burst-pause of utterance. Then, we developed an advanced communication robot that was used with the Pupiloid in order to enhance the robots affect during utterance. This advanced robot generates a vivid pupil response via mechanical structures based on the burst-pause of utterance. We carried out a sensory evaluation experiment under the condition that the robot speaks. The results demonstrated that the developed robot effectively enhances affect.