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In this article, we aim to discover the important factors for determining the psychological safety of humanoids and to develop a new psychological scale to measure the degree of safety quantitatively. To discover the factors that determine the psychological safety of humanoids from an ordinary person's perspective, we studied 919 Japanese, who observed movies of 11 humanoids and then freely described their impressions about what the safety of each humanoid was for them. Five psychologists categorized all of the obtained descriptions into several categories and then used the categories to compose a new psychological scale. Then, 2,624 different Japanese evaluated the same 11 humanoids using the new scale. Factor analysis on the obtained quantitative data revealed six factors of psychological safety: Performance, Humanness, Acceptance, Harmlessness, Toughness, and Agency. Additional analysis revealed that Performance, Acceptance, Harmlessness, and Toughness were the most important factors for determining the psychological safety of general humanoids. The usability of the new scale is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigate the effect of the attributes of humans, such as sex and age, on their psychological evaluation of humanoids. We used 11 humanoids in order to investigate the basic tendency of humans to evaluate humanoids. In addition, we included wheeled-walking robots, biped-walking robots, and androids in order to consider the influence of the type of humanoid. We collected data from 2,624 Japanese individuals, ranging from teenagers to people in their 70s, in three major cities in order to obtain maximally representative data. For our psychological scale, we used a humanoid-oriented scale that was developed on the basis of parameters for the evaluation of humanoids according to the perspectives of ordinary people. These parameters are familiarity, utility, and humanness. The results show that middle-aged and older females tend to rate the familiarity and humanness of all humanoids higher, adolescents tend to rate the familiarity and utility of wheeled-walking humanoids higher and the utility of androids lower, and middle-aged people tend to rate the utility of all humanoids higher. We discuss the improved design of humanoids considering both human characteristics and types of humanoids. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study identifies the basic general perspectives that ordinary people use to evaluate humanoids (Study 1). In addition, it develops a new psychological scale to quantify general impressions regarding humanoids based on these basic perspectives (Study 2). In Study 1, to discover the basic perspectives toward humanoids, we used 11 humanoids and collected data from 919 Japanese people ranging from teenagers to people in their 70s in three big cities. We asked people to describe their impressions in free text about the robots. Five psychologists analyzed the qualitative data to categorize all the descriptions into several categories. Then, we made the items based on the obtained descriptions to construct a new psychological scale for evaluating general impressions regarding humanoids. In Study 2, we asked 2,624 Japanese who did not participate in Study 1 to evaluate 11 humanoids on the developed scale. Factor analysis showed that nine factors should be used for evaluating the general impressions regarding humanoids: Familiarity, Repulsion, Performance, Utility, Motion, Sound, Voice, Humanness, and Entitativity. The factor structure is clear and its reliability as a psychological scale is satisfactorily high. Finally, we discuss the usability of the new scale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors have conducted experiments to measure personal space between a human and a humanoid robot using both a real and a VR (virtual reality) humanoid robot in order to evaluate the comfortable distance between them. The reason for using both a real and VR robot is to verify the effectiveness of VR. Using a VR robot, we can conduct experiments cheaply and safely because the robot has an unsubstantial body. As a result of our experiment, we have found that the personal space between a human and a humanoid robot matches the personal distance between two persons who are in a relationship of friendship. Also, no differences were seen in the shape of the personal space for a real robot and a VR robot significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In order for robots to be a part of human society, their social accceptance is an important issue if smooth interaction with humans is to be achieved. We propose a modified social force model that allows robots to move naturally like humans, based on estimated human motion and face pose. We add to the previous model the effect of the force due to face pose, in order to predict human motion and compute the robot motion itself. Our approach was implemented and tested on a real humanoid robot in a situation in which a human is confronted with a robot in an indoor environment. Experimental results illustrate that the robot is able to perform human-like navigation by avoiding the human in a face-to-face confrontation. Our system provides accurate face pose tracking that allows a robot to have a more realistic behaviour compared to the original social force model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]