Sociable dining table: The effectiveness of a "KonKon" interface for reciprocal adaptation

We developed a creatures-based social dining table that can communicate through a knocking sound, which in Japanese is pronounced as ¿KonKon.¿ Our main focus was to create a minimal number of cues for a proto-communication by establishing social interactions between a creature and a human. In particular, humans used the ¿KonKon¿ interface to communicate with a creature to demonstrate the social behaviors necessary to adapt to a person´s intentions. The creature used a mutual adaptation model for achieving a more ideal adaptation during the interactions. In the experimental results, we discuss the concept of the creature and indicate the effectiveness of the communication-protocol on the ¿KonKon¿ interface for mutual adaptation.