Humanoid Robots as a Broadcasting Communication Medium in Open Public Spaces

摘要

This paper reports a method that uses humanoid robots as a communication medium. Even though many interactive robots are being developed, their interactivity remains much poorer than that of humans due to their limited perception abilities. In our approach, the role of interactive robots is limited to a broadcasting medium for exploring the best way to attract people’s interest to information provided by robots. We propose using robots as a passive social medium, in which they behave as if they are talking together. We conducted an eight-day field experiment at a train station to investigate the effects of such a passive social medium.