Android as a Telecommunication Medium with a Human-like Presence Daisuke Sakamoto1&2, Takayuki Kanda1, Tetsuo Ono1&2, Hiroshi Ishiguro1&3, Norihiro Hagita1 1ATR Intelligent Robotics Laboratories 2-2-2 Hikaridai Seika-cho Soraku-gun, Kyoto, 619-0288, Japan 2Future University-Hakodate 116-2 Kamedanakano-cho, Hakodate, Hokkaido, 041-8655, Japan 3Osaka University 1-1 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan {sakamoto,kanda}@atr.jp [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT In this research, we realize human telepresence by developing a remote-controlled android system called Geminoid HI-1. Experimental results confirm that participants felt stronger presence of the operator when he talked through the android than when he appeared on a video monitor in a video conference system. In addition, participants talked with the robot naturally and evaluated its human likeness as equal to a man on a video monitor. At this paper’s conclusion, we will discuss a remote-control system for telepresence that uses a human-like android robot as a new telecommunication medium. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces-Interaction styles, I.2.9 [Artificial Intelligence]: Robotics General Terms Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Verification. Keywords Android Science, Humanoid Robot, Telepresence, Telecommunication. 1. INTRODUCTION Recently, many humanoid robots have been developed. For instance, Honda developed ASIMO, a famous humanoid robot that can walk on its biped legs. Breazeal et al. developed a face robot that can express facial emotions for interacting with people [1]. Moreover, a very human-like robot, or an android, has been developed [2]. Such human-like body properties of robots will be used for natural human-robot interaction [3-6]. We believe that a humanoid robot, particularly an android robot, can also be used as a telecommunication medium for distant inter-human communication. Previous media, such as video conference systems, have problems with effective presence; since people don’t feel they are sharing physical space [7], it is hard to identify eye-gaze [8] and so forth. In telepresence research, virtual reality techniques are often used; however, the advantages of robots as computer-graphic agents have been demonstrated. Kidd and Breazeal compared a robot and a computer-graphic agent and found that the robot was more suitable for communication about real-world objects [9]. Shinozawa et al. also argue that a robot is more appropriate for communication referring to real objects than a computer-graphic agent [10]. Since we are interested in presence in the real world, we focus on an approach based on real robots. Several telepresence research works are based on real robots. For instance, Sekiguchi et al. developed a telephone system where two stuffed-animal-type robots were placed at both ends and synchronized in motion so that people could exchange feelings of movement [11]. Tadakuma et al. used a humanoid robot whose operator was projected on its face [12]. However, conveyed human presence is not yet as real as actual humans. In this study, we utilize an android presence that resembles a human for distant inter-human communication. This paper reports an experiment to reveal how an android can convey human presence compared with a speakerphone and a video. 2. Android Telecommunication System We developed a remote-controlled android system that uses a very human-like robot called Geminoid HI-1 (a copy of co-author Hiroshi Ishiguro). Since we focus on the realization of telepresence and communication using a telecommunication system, our initial system was developed as a teleoperation system. Such previous media as telephones and video conference systems were easy for users, telepresence and communication operations must also be easy. To achieve this, we will develop the android as a semi-automatic controlled system. In this section, we introduce Geminoid HI-1 and the telecommunication system. 2.1 Geminoid HI-1 Since Geminoid HI-1, a copy of a man, was developed to resemble a human as much as possible, its appearance is actually human-like. This android is 140 cm tall sitting in a chair (it cannot stand) and has 50 DOF. Its face has 13 DOF, which gives it natural facial expressions. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. HRI’07, March 8-11, 2007, Arlington, Virginia, USA. Copyright 2007 ACM 978-1-59593-617-2/07/0003...$5.00. 193Figure 1 shows the Geminoid HI-1 and its real human counterpart. Natural and Human-Like Motions A very human-like appearance involves natural and human-like motion development. If we ignore this, then its impression will immediately be bad. We are trying to employ this robot as a telecommunication medium, so we must avoid such negative impressions to realize natural telecommunication. When we prepared its motions to be natural, we tried to make its motions as similar as the original man's motions. Of course, the definition of "naturalness" is vague; however, since the android's appearance is very similar to the original man, we believe that this criteria work well. The system continuously plays motion files in order to control this android's body movements. Motion builders who are engineers of developing robot’s motions define the motion files. Third person evaluate developed motions to help motion builders improve the naturalness of the motions. 2.2 Behavior Controller There are two levels of difficulties in realizing android's natural behavior in teleoperation: conscious and unconscious. For the conscious level problem, the difficulty comes from the burden of excessive operations to control everything about the robot. Geminoid HI-1 has 50 actuators. It is hard for operators to control all actuators directly. For that reason, we simplified remote control by choosing a semi-automatic system to solve this problem. A teleoperator simply switches the robot’s behaviors. Regarding unconscious level difficulties, the problem is subtle expression, which we solved by realizing unconscious behavior