Development and evaluation of interactive humanoid robots

We report the development and evaluation of a new interactive humanoid robot that communicates with humans and is designed to participate in human society as a partner. A human-like body will provide an abundance of nonverbal information and enable us to smoothly communicate with the robot. To achieve this, we developed a humanoid robot that autonomously interacts with humans by speaking and gesturing. Interaction achieved through a large number of interactive behaviors, which are developed by using a visualizing tool for understanding the developed complex system. Each interactive behavior is designed by using knowledge obtained through cognitive experiments and implemented by using situated recognition. The robot is used as a testbed for studying embodied communication. Our strategy is to analyze human-robot interaction in terms of body movements using a motion-capturing system that allows us to measure the body movements in detail. We performed experiments to compare the body movements with subjective evaluation based on a psychological method. The results reveal the importance of well-coordinated behaviors as well as the performance of the developed interactive behaviors and suggest a new analytical approach to human-robot interaction.