Development of an Effective Information Media Using Two Android Robots

Conversational robots have been used to convey information to people in the real world. Android robots, which have a human-like appearance, are expected to be able to convey not only objective information but also subjective information, such as a robot’s feelings. Meanwhile, as an approach to realize attractive conversation, multi-party conversation by multiple robots was the focus of this study. By collaborating among several robots, the robots provide information while maintaining the naturalness of conversation. However, the effectiveness of interaction with people has not been surveyed using this method. In this paper, to develop more efficient media to convey information, we propose a scenario-based, semi-passive conversation system using two androids. To verify its effectiveness, we conducted a subjective experiment comparing it to a system that does not include any interaction with people, and we investigated how much information the proposed system successfully conveys by using a recall test and a questionnaire about the conversation and androids. The experimental results showed that participants who engaged with the proposed system recalled more content from the conversation and felt more empathic concern for androids.