Psychological effects on interpersonal communication by bystander android using motions based on human-like needs

Recently, many humanoid robots have been developed and actively investigated all over the world in order to realize partner robots which can coexist in an environment shared with humans. having good communication skills is essential in order to interact naturally with humans. However, even with state-of-the-art interaction technology, it is still difficult for humans to interact with humanoid robots without conscious effort. In this paper, we use the android robot, which has an appearance which is quite similar to that of a human, as a bystander in human-human communication. The android is not explicitly involved in the conversation, however it makes small reactions to the behavior of the humans, and the psychological effects of its behavior on the human subjects are investigated. Through the experiments, it is shown that if the android mimics the behavior of the subject this can be quite effective in harmonizing the human-human communication.