ロボットやAIスピーカーなど発話機能を持った製品が普及してきました。しかし、こうした機械の発話音声は、人の声と比べると平坦で、メッセージに「重み」を感じないという声もあります。ロボットやAI技術は今後も社会に浸透していくことが予想されますが、大事な内容を伝える場面では、そのメッセージの表出力を高め、聞き手により重みを感じさせる技術が求められていました。
そこで、本研究チームは、小型ロボットの内部に重りを組み込み、ロボットの発話に合わせて重りを動かすことができる機構を開発し、2020年に発表しました。ユーザーはロボットを手に持つことで、発話に合わせたロボットの感情や意図を内部重りの動きから感じ取ることができます。
本研究では、この機構を備えたロボットが話し相手に与える影響を初めて調査しました。実験参加者には、あらかじめ用意された対話シナリオ（知人が待ち合わせに遅刻する）により、怒りを覚える状況をイメージしてもらい、そこでこのロボットと対話してもらいました。94人の実験参加者から得られたアンケート調査結果から、発話に合わせて内部重り運動が提示された条件では、発話のみが提示された条件と比べ、ロボットに対して感じる真剣さの度合が有意に高まることが分かりました。さらに、前者の条件では後者の条件と比較して平均23％の怒り抑制効果が確認されました。それと同時に、遅刻した相手に対する許しの気持ちも高まることが実験結果から示唆されました。
本研究で開発・検証された技術は、人間がAIやロボットと親密にコミュニケーションしていく社会や、そうした技術を介して人と人がコミュニケーションしていく社会において、「想い」や「感情」などの要素を効果的に伝達することに役立つと期待されます。
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プレスリリース
研究代表者
筑波大学システム情報系 知能機能工学域
田中 文英 准教授
Researchers at the University of Tsukuba create a handheld social robot that can appear to convey emotions by shifting an internal weight while reading out text messages, which may help improve digital interpersonal interactions.
Tsukuba, Japan – Scientists from the Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems at the University of Tsukuba devised a text message mediation robot that can help users control their anger when receiving upsetting news. This device may help improve social interactions as we move towards a world with increasingly digital communications.
While a quick text message apology is a fast and easy way for friends to let us know they are going to be late for a planned meet up, it is often missing the human element that would accompany an explanation face-to-face, or even over the phone. It is likely to be more upsetting when we are not able to perceive the emotional weight behind our friends’ regret at making us wait.
Now, researchers at the University of Tsukuba have built a handheld robot they called OMOY, which was equipped with a movable weight actuated by mechanical components inside its body. By shifting the internal weight, the robot could express simulated emotions. The robot was deployed as a mediator for reading text messages. A text with unwelcome or frustrating news could be followed by an exhortation by OMOY to not get upset, or even sympathy for the user. “With the medium of written digital communication, the lack of social feedback redirect focus from the sender and onto the content of the message itself,” author Professor Fumihide Tanaka says. The mediator robot was designed so that it can suppress the user’s anger and other negative interpersonal motivations, such as thoughts of revenge, and instead fostered forgiveness.
The researchers tested 94 people with a message like “I’m sorry, I am late. The appointment slipped my mind. Can you wait another hour?” The team found that OMOY was able to reduce negative emotions. “The mediator robot can relay a frustrating message followed by giving its own opinion. When this speech is accompanied by the appropriate weight shifts, we saw that that the user would perceive the ‘intention’ of the robot to help them calm down,” Professor Tanaka says.
The robot’s body expression produced by weight shifts did not require any specific external components, such as arms or legs, which implied that the internal weight movements could reduce a user’s anger or other negative emotions without the use of rich body gestures or facial expressions.
The work is published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI as “Weight Shift Movements of a Social Mediator Robot Make It Being Recognized as Serious and Suppress Anger, Revenge and Avoidance Motivation of the User” (DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2022.790209).
Funding
This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas Grant Number 20H05553 and Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellow Grant Number 20J10887.
Journal
Frontiers in Robotics and AI
Article Title
Weight Shift Movements of a Social Mediator Robot Make It Being Recognized as Serious and Suppress Anger, Revenge and Avoidance Motivation of the User (Peer-Reviewed Publication)
Publication Date
28-Feb-2022
Correspondence
Associate Professor TANAKA Fumihide
Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba