Interactive Robot
Research Team

Research Summary

This team aims at developing a social robot that can naturally interact with humans and provide casual and modest support for human daily activities. We explore a mechanism underlies natural interaction and robot behaviors that subconsciously change human behaviors.

Main Research Fields
Human-Robot Interaction
Keywords
  • Humanoid
  • Android robot
  • Humanlike expression
  • Natural interaction
  • Non-verbal interaction
  • Multimodal recognition and expression
Research theme
  • Modeling human behaviors in interaction and generating natural robot behavior
  • Recognizing a state of human activity based on multimodal information
  • Design of robot behaviors to lead humans’ subconscious behavioral change

Takashi Minato

Takashi Minato

History

2001
Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
2002
Osaka University
2006
Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
2011
Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR)
2020
RIKEN

Award

2016
ATR Prize for excellent study
2020
ATR Prize for excellent study

Members

Carlos Toshinori Ishi
Senior Scientist
Chaoran Liu
Research Scientist
Kurima Sakai
Research Scientist
Tomo Funayama
Technical Staff I
Ryusuke Mikata
Technical Staff I
Yuka Nakayama
Technical Staff I
Takamasa Iio
Visiting Scientist
Changzeng Fu
Visiting Scientist
Alexander Diel
Visiting Researcher
Bowen Wu
Research Part-time Worker I and Student Trainee
Jiaqi Shi
Research Part-time Worker I and Student Trainee
Taiken Shintani
Research Part-time Worker I and Student Trainee
Houjian Guo
Research Part-time Worker II and Student Trainee
Shudai Deguchi
Student Trainee
Namika Taya
Administrative Part-time Worker II and Student Trainee

Former member

Yuki Hori
Student Trainee (2020/08-2022/03)

Research results

Upper body gestures

For the generation of natural robot movements in interaction, we are studying the generation of upper body gestures synchronized with the robot's voice. The Conditional GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks) model is trained based on the data of natural human gestures while speaking. This model can generate the body/hand gestures from the input speech signals. So far, we have implemented the model in a CG agent, and have shown that human-like gestures are generated through subject experiments.

Upper body gestures

Gaze control

We are studying gaze control in face-to-face interactions between robots and multiple people to generate natural robot motions. Based on the data from multi-person dialogues, we modeled occurrence probabilities of eye contact, looking away, and the direction of looking away depending on the role of the dialogue (speaker, main listener, sub-listener, etc.), and developed a gaze behavior model. We implemented this model to control the gaze of a small robot, and through subjective experiments, we have shown that the model generates more human-like behavior than conventional methods.

Gaze control

Selected Publications

  1. Uchida, T., Takahashi, H., Ban. M., Shimaya, J., Minato, T., Ogawa, K., Yoshikawa, Y., and Ishiguro, H.:
    "Women Don't Hesitate to Self-disclose to Robots: Gender Differences for Attitude toward Robots"
    Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, Vol.4, No.3, p.35 (2020)
  2. Zheng, X., Shiomi, M., Minato, T., and Ishiguro, H.:
    "How Can Robot Make People Feel Intimacy Through Touch?"
    Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics, Vol.32, No.1, pp.51-58 (2020)
  3. Jinnai, N., Sumioka, H., Minato, T., and Ishiguro, H.:
    "The Multi-modal Interaction through Anthropomorphically Designed Communication Medium Enhances the Self-Disclosures of the Personal Information"
    Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics, Vol.32, No.1, pp.76-85 (2020)
  4. Zheng, X., Shiomi, M., Minato, T., and Ishiguro, H.:
    "What Kinds of Robot's Touch Will Match Expressed Emotions?"
    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol.5, Issue 1, pp.127-134 (2019)
  5. Uchida, T., Minato, T., and Ishiguro, H.:
    "Who is responsible for a dialogue breakdown? An error recovery strategy that promotes cooperative intentions from humans by mutual attribution of responsibility in human-robot dialogues"
    Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Vol.6, No.29 (2019)
  6. Ishi, CT., Minato, T., and Ishiguro, H.:
    "Analysis and generation of laughter motions, and evaluation in an android robot"
    APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing, Vol.8 (2019)
  7. Shiomi, M., Shatani, K., Minato, T., and Ishiguro, H.:
    "How should a Robot React before People's Touch?: Modeling a Pre-Touch Reaction Distance for a Robot’s Face"
    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol.3, Issue 4, pp.3773-3780 (2018)
  8. Sakai, K., Minato, T., Ishi, CT., and Ishiguro, H.:
    "Novel Speech Motion Generation by Modelling Dynamics of Human Speech Production"
    Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Vol.4, No.49 (2017)
  9. Ishi, CT., Minato, T., and Ishiguro, H.:
    "Motion Analysis in Vocalized Surprise Expressions and Motion Generation in Android Robots"
    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol.2, Issue 3, pp.1748-1754 (2017)
  10. Kuwamura, K., Minato, T., Nishio, S., and Ishiguro, H.:
    "Inconsistency of Personality Distortion Caused by Appearance Gap in Robotic Telecommunication"
    Interaction Studies, Vol.16, No.2, pp.249-271 (2015)

Links

Contact Information

takashi.minato [at] riken.jp

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