Comparison an On-screen Agent with a Robotic Agent in an Everyday Interaction Style: How to Make Users React Toward an On-screen Agent as if They are Reacting Toward a Robotic Agent

Communication media terminals, such as PDAs, cell phones, and mobile PCs, are devices that are used globally and are a part of our daily lives. Most people have access to such media terminals. Various interactive agents, such as robotic agents (for example, Gravot et al., 2006; Imai et al., 2003) and embodied conversational agents (ECA) appearing on a computer display (for example, Cassell et al., 2002; Prendinger and Ishizuka, 2004), are now being developed to assist us with our daily tasks. The technologies that these interactive agents can provide will soon be applied to these widespread media terminals. Some researchers have started considering the effects of these different agents appearing on these media terminals on users’ behaviours and impressions, especially for comparisons of on-screen agents appearing in a computer display with robotic agents (Shinozawa et al., 2004; Powers et al., 2007; Wainer et al, 2006). For example, Shinozawa et al. (2004) investigated the effects of a robot’s and on-screen agent’s recommendations on human decision making. Powers et al. (2007) experimentally compared people’s responses in health interview with a computer agent, a collocated robot and a remote robot projected. And Wainer et al. (2006) measured task performance and participants’ impression of robot’s social abilities in a structured task based on the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. Actually, most of these studies reported that most users stated that they felt much more comfortable with the robotic agents and that these agents were much more believable interactive partners compared to on-screen agents. In these studies, the participants were asked to directly face the agents during certain experimental tasks. However, this “face-toface interaction” does not really represent a realistic interaction style with the interactive agents in our daily lives. Imagine that these interactive agents were basically developed to assist us with our daily tasks. It is assumed that the users are engaged in tasks when they need some help from the agents. Thus, it is expected that these users do not look at the agents much but mainly focus on what they are doing. I called this interaction style “an everyday interaction style.” I assumed that this interaction style is much more realistic than the “face-to-face interaction” on which most former studies focused.