The more robots look like humans, the creepier they seem. You may know this feeling, but what kind of robots could we accept? Professor Takanori Komatsu of Meiji University is exploring this question from a human psychology perspective. Deep down, maybe we just don’t want to get along with robots. What do you think? This page is produced by Meiji University' pubic relation office.
https://www.meiji.ac.jp/cip/english/incredible-senseis/
Robots instead of pets, chatbots instead of friends, silicone lips for kisses from a far. Many digital gadgets are being designed to replace social contact. But can they really alleviate loneliness? This video is produced by DW (Deutsch Welle; German international broadcast).
https://www.dw.com/en/shift-living-in-the-digital-age/video-66080312
By means of the moral dilemma tasks, it is getting possible to understand how humans perceive robots. Deep down, how do humans perceive robots? Do we see them as fellow human beings? Or do we regard them as mere "tools"? In order to think about a possible future world in which humans and robots coexist, it will be important to deeply understand how humans perceive the robots.
Owners of Artificial Intelligence Systems are More Easily Blamed Compared with System Designers in Moral Dilemma Tasks, (Takanori Komatsu), HRI2017
Blaming the Reluctant Robot: Parallel Blame Judgments for Robots in Moral Dilemmas across U.S. and Japan, (Takanori Komatsu, Bertram F. Malle, and Matthias Scheutz), HRI2021
No matter how fast the Internet becomes or how much the performance of computers improves, users cannot escape from waiting for a computer's response/processing. Therefore, we are studying ways to present information in such a way that users in a waiting state can subjectively feel the waiting time as short as possible (This means, we leave it to someone else to make the Internet and computers themselves faster). Our research to date has shown that simply adding "a little extra" to existing UI elements such as sound information, a throbber, a progress bar, and a countdown display can shorten the users' subjective waiting time.
Exploring Auditory Information to Change Users’ Perception of Time Passing as Shorter, (Takanori Komatsu and Seiji Yamada), CHI2020
How Throbber Components Affect Users’ Perception of Waiting Time, (Hiroto Oshima, Takanori Komatsu and Seiji Yamada), MobileHCI2020
Simple sound signals such as "beep" are used to convey certain information to the user (in the case of a washing machine: washing is finished, please clean the filter, etc.). We are exploring the possibilities of such simple sound information from various perspectives. Based on the results of our research, we have proposed sounds 1) can convey information about the internal state of a system more effectively than complex melodies or speech sounds (We named this sound "Artificial Subtle Expressions," 2) can convey both left and right, even though they are monoral sound , and 3) makes waiting time shorter.
Artificial Subtle Expressions (Takanori Komatsu et al), CHI2010,2017,2018
Monaural auditory display to convey directional information (Takanori Komatsu and Seiji Yamada), CogSci2016
Robots with various designs, such as cool robots and cute robots, are appearing in the world today. The relationship between such designs and the functions of the robots will have a great impact on human interaction. For example, how would users feel about a robot that looks cool but is completely useless? We are conducting various experimental investigations on the balance between robot design and functionality.
Adaptation gap hypothesis (Takanori Komatsu, Rie Kurosawa and Seiji Yamada)，International Journal of Social Robotics, 2011
Designing robot faces suited to specific tasks that these robots are good at (Masahiro Kamide and Takanori Komatsu)，ROMAN2017