Human friendship estimation model for communication robots

This paper reports on an analysis of inter-human interaction in the presence of a humanoid robot, which provides us with important non-verbal information for establishing relationship among humans and robots, as well as a model for communication robots to estimate friendships among humans around them. Human-robot interactions recorded in videos are rich in useful information to develop the social abilities of communication robots, though there are many difficulties associated with analyzing them since these videos are qualitative data. We applied the observation method, which is a common psychological method for analyzing qualitative data, to analyze the interaction among children and a robot in an elementary school. We established a model to estimate friendships among children from their non-verbal interaction with each other using factors such as by touch, gaze, and distance between them. The results revealed a gender difference in their non-verbal interactions, and by separating the model into different components for each gender, we were able to discriminate between friendly and non-friendly relationships among the children, with a 74.5% accuracy for males and an 83.8% one for females

[1]  Takayuki Kanda,et al.  Friendly social robot that understands human's friendly relationships , 2004, 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37566).

[2]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  A Context-Dependent Attention System for a Social Robot , 1999, IJCAI.

[3]  R. Edelmann,et al.  Book reviewThe anatomy of relationships: M. Argyle and M. Henderson: Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middx. (1985). 359 Pages, £3.95. , 1986 .

[4]  E. Vatikiotis-Bateson,et al.  Communicative criteria for processing time/space-varying information , 2001, Proceedings 10th IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication. ROMAN 2001 (Cat. No.01TH8591).

[5]  Tanzeem Choudhury.  Modeling Face-to-Face Communication using the Sociometer , 2003 .

[6]  Tetsuo Ono,et al.  Development of an Interactive Humanoid Robot "Robovie" - An interdisciplinary approach , 2001, ISRR.

[7]  S. R. Wallace.  Encyclopedia of psychology. , 1947, Psychological bulletin.

[8]  Tetsuo Ono,et al.  A constructive approach for developing interactive humanoid robots , 2002, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[9]  Tora K. Bikson,et al.  Evolving electronic communication networks: an empirical assessment , 1986, CSCW '86.

[10]  Hideki Kozima,et al.  Interactive robots for communication-care: a case-study in autism therapy , 2005, ROMAN 2005. IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2005..

[11]  E. Hall,et al.  The Hidden Dimension , 1970 .

[12]  Hans J. Eysenck,et al.  Encyclopedia of psychology , 1985 .

[13]  Tetsuo Ono,et al.  Development of an Interactive Humanoid Robot “ Robovie ”-An interdisciplinary research approach between cognitive science and robotics - , 2003 .

[14]  Takayuki Kanda,et al.  Reading Human Relationships from Their Interaction with an Interactive Humanoid Robot , 2004, IEA/AIE.

[15]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Physical and affective interaction between human and mental commit robot , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[16]  Scott R. McConnell,et al.  Sociometrics: Peer-referenced measures and the assessment of social competence: Development, assessment, and modification , 1986 .

[17]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  Investigating models of social development using a humanoid robot , 2003, Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, 2003..

[18]  Satoshi Oyama,et al.  Analysis and improvement of HITS algorithm for detecting Web communities , 2004 .