Effect of the projection of robot’s talk information on the perception of communicating human

Abstract

ABSTRACT For a conversational robot, conveying its intention explicitly to the communicating human is one of the most important but challenging tasks in the field of human–robot interaction (HRI). Expressing the robot’s current mental state or feeling while conversing may help achieve a more effective communication. In this study, a robot equipped with a projecting system is implemented, in which the mental state of the robot is projected onto the backside wall to better convey its intention. To verify the effectiveness of the implemented system, as a first step, the effect of projecting only the text of the robot’s speech on the subjective evaluation of the communicating human was examined from different aspects of the robot. To this end, two experiments were conducted: a video watching experiment, in which several human subjects watched a video of a speaking robot equipped with the projecting system, and a participating experiment, in which a limited number of human subjects participated in listening to the speech of such a robot in a real-world environment. The experimental results revealed that the projection of the speech information can improve some elements of the human perception of the robot’s speech and mind.