Physical and affective interaction between human and mental commit robot

This paper introduces the research on mental commit robot that seeks a different direction which is not so rigidly dependent on such objective measures. The main goal of this research is to explore a new area in robotics, with an emphasis on human-robot interaction. In the previous research, we introduced a cat robot and evaluated it by interviewing many people. However, some subjects gave severe comments on structure of the cat robot appearance because they associated and compared it with a real cat based on their own experiences and knowledge. This paper investigates the influence of a priori knowledge into subjective interpretation and evaluation of a mental commit robot. We develop a new seal robot that has appearance of a baby of harp seal. Most people did not know harp seal precisely nor have experience of interaction with it. The subjects evaluated the seal robot while interacting with it. Comparing with the results of the previous research, we show that a priori knowledge on model of robots had much influence on subjective interpretation and evaluation of mental commit robots by short-term interaction.