Psychological effects of an android bystander on human-human communication

Many humanoid robots have been developed and actively investigated all over the world in order to realize partner robots which coexist in the human environment. For such robots, high communication ability is essential in order to naturally interact with human. However, even with the state-of-the-art interaction technology, it is still difficult for human to interact with humanoids without conscious efforts. In this paper, we apply the android robot, which has a quite similar appearance to a human, to a bystander in human-human communication. The android is not explicitly involved in the conversation, however makes small reactions to the behaviors of the humans, and the psychological effects on human subjects are investigated. Through the experiments, it is shown that mimicry behavior of the subject by the android is quite effective to harmonize the human-human communication.