Effects of observation of robot–robot communication on human–robot communication

Abstract This paper proposes a human–robot communication system based on observations of robot–robot conversations to encourage humans to consider robots as natural targets for communication. In the proposed system, when nearby robots are communicating, voices and gestures are used to indicate that the robots are conversing with each other. When humans in the vicinity observe a robot building a relationship by interacting with another robot or the surrounding environment, they regard robots as equal targets for communication and build relationships with robots or carry out natural communications with robots. We used robots with sufficient body expression capabilities to actually implement a robot system that enabled communications according to robot–robot conversations or situations. This paper reports on a robot system that implements both of these kinds of robot–robot conversations and human–robot conversations and verifies the effects of the observation of robot–robot conversations through psychological experiments. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 3, 87(5): 48–58, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/ecjc.10171