ABSTRACT
ever, we believe that robots can maintain interaction with humans, if they can recognize other human behaviors, such as distance, touching actions, and visual movements, in addition to utterances.People have bodies that afford sophisticated means of expression through diverse channels. We believe that a robot partner, ideally, would have a humanlike body. A robot with a human like body allows people to intuitively understand its gestures, which in turn causes people to behave unconsciously as if they were communicating with a human. These effects have even been observed with screen-bound agents that move and point (Isbister, Nakanishi, Ishida, & Nass, 2000). We believe that this anthropomorphic basis not only supports the embodiment of computer interfaces (Cassell et al., 1999), but also enables their grounding in social relationships (Cowley & MacDorman, 1995). Eye contact, gesture observation, and imitation in human-robot interactions greatly increase people’s understanding of utterances (Ono & Imai, 2000). Close synchronization of embodied communication also plays an important role in establishing a communicative relation between the speaker and listeners (Ono, Ishiguro, & Imai, 2001). We believe that in designing an interactive robot, its body should be based on the human body to produce the most effective communication.When partner robots are involved in people’s daily life, they will take on certain roles and contribute to humans based on their skills. Apparently, a robot that is skilled at a single or limited set of tasks cannot satisfy the designation of partner. For example, a museum tour guide robot (Burgard et al., 1998) is equipped with robust navigational skills, which are crucial to its role; however, humans still do not perceive such a robot as their partner but see it merely as a museum orientation tool. What we recognize as a partner is probably a robot that can develop various kinds of relationships with humans. This does not mean simply performing multiple tasks. Rather, we believe that it is important to establish interactive relationships first, and then the tasks and skills of partner robots will gradually emerge along with advancing technologies.
