Physical and Affective Interaction between Human and Mental Commit Robot

Recent advances in robotics have been applied to automation in industrial manufacturing, with the primary purpose of optimizing practical systems in terms of such objective measures as accuracy, speed, and cost. This paper introduces research on mental commit robot that seeks a different direction that is not so rigidly dependent on such objective measures. The main goal of this research is to explore a new area in robotics, with an emphasis on human-robot interaction. In the previous research, we introduced a cat robot and evaluated it by interviewing many people. The results showed that physical interaction improved subjective evaluation. However, some subjects gave severe comments on structure of the cat robot when they interacted with it physically. Because of appearance of cat robot, subjects associated with a real cat depending on their own experiences and knowledge, and then compared the robot with real cat. This paper investigates influence of a priori knowledge into subjective interpretation and evaluation of mental commit robot. We developed a new seal robot that has appearance of a baby of harp seal. Most people did not know harp seal precisely nor have experience of interaction with it. Then, subjects evaluated the seal robot while interacting with it.