Embodied cooperative behaviors by an autonomous humanoid robot

Previous research works in robotics and cognitive science have reported that humans utilize embodied cooperative behaviors in communication, such as nodding in response to another´s it utterance and looking at a certain object in a certain direction as others look or point at. We have developed a humanoid robot that utilizes such an embodied cooperative behavior for natural communication in a route guidance situation. It obtains numerical data on a human´s body movement via a motion capturing system and then autonomously selects appropriate cooperative embodiment units from 18 implemented units. Each unit realizes a certain cooperative embodiment behaviors such as eye-contact by using the motion capturing system as well. As a result of a subject experiment, we have verified the effectiveness of the embodied cooperative behaviors of the robot for reliable and sympathetic communication. Moreover, we analyzed how the auditory expression and the embodiment contributed to the effect.