Producing animal-likeness on artifacts and analyzing its effect on human behavioral attitudes

Making and maintaining human-pet-bonds is the most essential task for pet robots. To realize this task, the authors propose a methodology of linking psychological interactions between a person and a pet robot. Production of an animal-likeness impression toward a person is one of the most important objectives for interactive pet robots. Animal-like impression can have power to effect human psychological conditions and also human behaviour. We propose 3 methods to produce animal-likeness in artifacts, namely morphological appearance method, body temperature method, and vital body movement stimulus method. In addition to producing impressions, the authors measure human behavioural uncertainty quantitatively in order to show the relationship between human behavioural attitudes towards a pet robot and what he/she feels about it. These methods for producing impressions and measuring human behaviour will be the key to founding a close and friendly bond between human beings and pet robots