Opinion attribution improves motivation to exchange subjective opinions with humanoid robots.

In recent years, the development of robots that can engage in non-task-oriented dialogue with people, such as chat, has received increasing attention. This study aims to clarify the factors that improve the user's willingness to talk with robots in non-task oriented dialogues (e.g., chat). A previous study reported that exchanging subjective opinions makes such dialogue enjoyable and enthusiastic. In some cases, however, the robot's subjective opinions are not realistic, i.e., the user believes the robot does not have opinions, thus we cannot attribute the opinion to the robot. For example, if a robot says that alcohol tastes good, it may be difficult to imagine the robot having such an opinion. In this case, the user's motivation to exchange opinions may decrease. In this study, we hypothesize that regardless of the type of robot, opinion attribution affects the user's motivation to exchange opinions with humanoid robots. We examined the effect by preparing various opinions of two kinds of humanoid robots. The experimental result suggests that not only the users' interest in the topic but also the attribution of the subjective opinions to them influence their motivation to exchange opinions. Another analysis revealed that the android significantly increased the motivation when they are interested in the topic and do not attribute opinions, while the small robot significantly increased it when not interested and attributed opinions. In situations where there are opinions that cannot be attributed to humanoid robots, the result that androids are more motivating when users have the interests even if opinions are not attributed can indicate the usefulness of androids.

Asynchrony enhances uncanniness in human, android, and virtual dynamic facial expressions.

OBJECTIVE: Uncanniness plays a vital role in interactions with humans and artificial agents. Previous studies have shown that uncanniness is caused by a higher sensitivity to deviation or atypicality in specialized categories, such as faces or facial expressions, marked by configural processing. We hypothesized that asynchrony, understood as a temporal deviation in facial expression, could cause uncanniness in the facial expression. We also hypothesized that the effect of asynchrony could be disrupted through inversion. RESULTS: Sixty-four participants rated the uncanniness of synchronous or asynchronous dynamic face emotion expressions of human, android, or computer-generated (CG) actors, presented either upright or inverted. Asynchrony vs. synchrony expressions increased uncanniness for all upright expressions except for CG angry expressions. Inverted compared with upright presentations produced less evident asynchrony effects for human angry and android happy expressions. These results suggest that asynchrony can cause dynamic expressions to appear uncanny, which is related to configural processing but different across agents.

Human-like interactions prompt people to take a robot's perspective.

The increasing need for human-robot interaction requires not only robots to understand how humans think, but also humans to understand robots. Interestingly, little attention has been given to how humans interpret robots' behaviors. In this study, we adopted a social mental rotation task and investigated whether socially engaging behaviors could influence how people take a robot's perspectives. In a real lab, two android robots with neutral appearance sat opposite each other by a table with conflicting perspectives. Before the participant started the experiment, one of the robots behaved more interactively than the other by showing more socially engaging behaviors. Then the participant was required to identify rotated normal or mirrored digits presented inbetween the two robots. Results revealed a significant interactive effect between the digits type (normal; mirrored) and robot type (interactive; noninteractive). When digits were oriented to the interactive robot, we found a larger RT difference between normal and mirrored digits. In general, these findings suggested that robots' interactive behaviors could influence how people spontaneously consider the robot's perspective. Future studies may further consider how interactive behaviors can shape human-robot relationships and facilitate human-robot interaction.

Differences in configural processing for human versus android dynamic facial expressions.

Humanlike androids can function as social agents in social situations and in experimental research. While some androids can imitate facial emotion expressions, it is unclear whether their expressions tap the same processing mechanisms utilized in human expression processing, for example configural processing. In this study, the effects of global inversion and asynchrony between facial features as configuration manipulations were compared in android and human dynamic emotion expressions. Seventy-five participants rated (1) angry and happy emotion recognition and (2) arousal and valence ratings of upright or inverted, synchronous or asynchronous, android or human agent dynamic emotion expressions. Asynchrony in dynamic expressions significantly decreased all ratings (except valence in angry expressions) in all human expressions, but did not affect android expressions. Inversion did not affect any measures regardless of agent type. These results suggest that dynamic facial expressions are processed in a synchrony-based configural manner for humans, but not for androids.

The inversion effect on the cubic humanness-uncanniness relation in humanlike agents.

The uncanny valley describes the typically nonlinear relation between the esthetic appeal of artificial entities and their human likeness. The effect has been attributed to specialized (configural) processing that increases sensitivity to deviations from human norms. We investigate this effect in computer-generated, humanlike android and human faces using dynamic facial expressions. Angry and happy expressions with varying degrees of synchrony were presented upright and inverted and rated on their eeriness, strangeness, and human likeness. A sigmoidal function of human likeness and uncanniness ("uncanny slope") was found for upright expressions and a linear relation for inverted faces. While the function is not indicative of an uncanny valley, the results support the view that configural processing moderates the effect of human likeness on uncanniness and extend its role to dynamic facial expressions.

[The development of methods to evaluate experimental animal behavior using images].

In life science and medicine, we have been conducting research using laboratory animals such as mice, rats and monkeys. However, it is impossible for humans to fully understand the feelings and conditions of experimental animals with whom we cannot communicate. In particular, investigators have recently focused on brain function and have created animal models to mimic human depression, pain, and dementia through behavioral tests such as tail suspension and mazes. These methods allow for some evaluation of the animal's condition. However, we cannot detect trivial behavioral changes that reflect the state of mind and body of the animals reproducibly and objectively. With improvements in imaging and information processing technology, it is now possible to photograph animals for extended periods of time and perform sophisticated analysis. Artificial intelligence (AI) can also perform learning and inference, or intelligent work (machine learning), for extended periods of time by processing higher levels of information and can find interpretations that humans are unaware of. To bring innovation to life science research using animals, it is necessary to integrate and utilize these technologies to digitize and extensively and deeply evaluate biological information and emotions of experimental animals. We have been developing some basic technologies for experimental animals by applying image analysis technology, AI, and mathematical analysis. In this review, we introduce the technologies we have developed, including the latest reports.

A study of interactive robot architecture through the practical implementation of conversational android.

This study shows an autonomous android robot that can have a natural daily dialogue with humans. The dialogue system for daily dialogue is different from a task-oriented dialogue system in that it is not given a clear purpose or the necessary information. That is, it needs to generate an utterance in a situation where there is no clear request from humans. Therefore, to continue a dialogue with a consistent content, it is necessary to essentially change the design policy of dialogue management compared with the existing dialogue system. The purpose of our study is to constructively find out the dialogue system architecture for realizing daily dialogue through implementing an autonomous dialogue robot capable of daily natural dialogue. We defined the android's desire necessary for daily dialogue and the dialogue management system in which the android changes its internal (mental) states in accordance to the desire and partner's behavior and chooses a dialogue topic suitable for the current situation. The developed android could continue daily dialogue for about 10 min in the scene where the robot and partner met for the first time in the experiment. Moreover, a multimodal Turing test has shown that half of the participants had felt that the android was remotely controlled to some degree, that is, the android's behavior was humanlike. This result suggests that the system construction method assumed in this study is an effective approach to realize daily dialogue, and the study discusses the system architecture for daily dialogue.

Implementation and Evaluation of a Grip Behavior Model to Express Emotions for an Android Robot.

In this study, we implemented a model with which a robot expressed such complex emotions as heartwarming (e.g., happy and sad) or horror (fear and surprise) by its touches and experimentally investigated the effectiveness of the modeled touch behaviors. Robots that can express emotions through touching behaviors increase their interaction capabilities with humans. Although past studies achieved ways to express emotions through a robot's touch, such studies focused on expressing such basic emotions as happiness and sadness and downplayed these complex emotions. Such studies only proposed a model that expresses these emotions by touch behaviors without evaluations. Therefore, we conducted the experiment to evaluate the model with participants. In the experiment, they evaluated the perceived emotions and empathies from a robot's touch while they watched a video stimulus with the robot. Our results showed that the touch timing before the climax received higher evaluations than touch timing after for both the scary and heartwarming videos.

An Android for Emotional Interaction: Spatiotemporal Validation of Its Facial Expressions.

Android robots capable of emotional interactions with humans have considerable potential for application to research. While several studies developed androids that can exhibit human-like emotional facial expressions, few have empirically validated androids' facial expressions. To investigate this issue, we developed an android head called Nikola based on human psychology and conducted three studies to test the validity of its facial expressions. In Study 1, Nikola produced single facial actions, which were evaluated in accordance with the Facial Action Coding System. The results showed that 17 action units were appropriately produced. In Study 2, Nikola produced the prototypical facial expressions for six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise), and naïve participants labeled photographs of the expressions. The recognition accuracy of all emotions was higher than chance level. In Study 3, Nikola produced dynamic facial expressions for six basic emotions at four different speeds, and naïve participants evaluated the naturalness of the speed of each expression. The effect of speed differed across emotions, as in previous studies of human expressions. These data validate the spatial and temporal patterns of Nikola's emotional facial expressions, and suggest that it may be useful for future psychological studies and real-life applications.

Gentle Versus Strong Touch Classification: Preliminary Results, Challenges, and Potentials.

Touch plays a crucial role in humans' nonverbal social and affective communication. It then comes as no surprise to observe a considerable effort that has been placed on devising methodologies for automated touch classification. For instance, such an ability allows for the use of smart touch sensors in such real-life application domains as socially-assistive robots and embodied telecommunication. In fact, touch classification literature represents an undeniably progressive result. However, these results are limited in two important ways. First, they are mostly based on overall (i.e., average) accuracy of different classifiers. As a result, they fall short in providing an insight on performance of these approaches as per different types of touch. Second, they do not consider the same type of touch with different level of strength (e.g., gentle versus strong touch). This is certainly an important factor that deserves investigating since the intensity of a touch can utterly transform its meaning (e.g., from an affectionate gesture to a sign of punishment). The current study provides a preliminary investigation of these shortcomings by considering the accuracy of a number of classifiers for both, within- (i.e., same type of touch with differing strengths) and between-touch (i.e., different types of touch) classifications. Our results help verify the strength and shortcoming of different machine learning algorithms for touch classification. They also highlight some of the challenges whose solution concepts can pave the path for integration of touch sensors in such application domains as human-robot interaction (HRI).

Facial Pre-Touch Space Differentiates the Level of Openness Among Individuals.

Social and cognitive psychology provide a rich map of our personality landscape. What appears to be unexplored is the correspondence between these findings and our behavioural responses during day-to-day life interaction. In this article, we utilize cluster analysis to show that the individuals' facial pre-touch space can be divided into three well-defined subspaces and that within the first two immediate clusters around the face area such distance information significantly correlate with their openness in the five-factor model (FFM). In these two clusters, we also identify that the individuals' facial pre-touch space can predict their level of openness that are further categorized into six distinct levels with a highly above chance accuracy. Our results suggest that such personality factors as openness are not only reflected in individuals' behavioural responses but also these responses allow for a fine-grained categorization of individuals' personality.

Who Is Responsible for a Dialogue Breakdown? An Error Recovery Strategy That Promotes Cooperative Intentions From Humans by Mutual Attribution of Responsibility in Human-Robot Dialogues.

We propose a strategy with which conversational android robots can handle dialogue breakdowns. For smooth human-robot conversations, we must not only improve a robot's dialogue capability but also elicit cooperative intentions from users for avoiding and recovering from dialogue breakdowns. A cooperative intention can be encouraged if users recognize their own responsibility for breakdowns. If the robot always blames users, however, they will quickly become less cooperative and lose their motivation to continue a discussion. This paper hypothesizes that for smooth dialogues, the robot and the users must share the responsibility based on psychological reciprocity. In other words, the robot should alternately attribute the responsibility to itself and to the users. We proposed a dialogue strategy for recovering from dialogue breakdowns based on the hypothesis and experimentally verified it with an android. The experimental result shows that the proposed method made the participants aware of their share of the responsibility of the dialogue breakdowns without reducing their motivation, even though the number of dialogue breakdowns was not statistically reduced compared with a control condition. This suggests that the proposed method effectively elicited cooperative intentions from users during dialogues.

Successful treatment of necrotizing fasciitis in an upper extremity caused by Clostridium perfringens after bone marrow transplantation.

We report a 47-year-old man with acute leukemia who survived a severe case of necrotizing fasciitis caused by Clostridium perfringens involving his right upper extremity. On day 5 after stem cell transplantation, progressive local tissue necrosis led to septicemia and disseminated intravascular coagulation. Early diagnosis and prompt initiation of appropriate therapy, including surgical debridement and broad-spectrum antibiotics, were crucial. A recombinant thrombomodulin might have not only resolved the coagulation problem but also prevented multiple organ failure associated with the systemic inflammatory response.

Cues that trigger social transmission of disinhibition in young children.

Previous studies have shown that observing a human model's actions, but not a robot's actions, could induce young children's perseverative behaviors and suggested that children's sociocognitive abilities can lead to perseverative errors ("social transmission of disinhibition"). This study investigated how the social transmission of disinhibition would occur. Specifically, the authors examined whether a robot with human appearance (an android) triggered young children's perseveration and compared the effects of the android with those of a human model. The results revealed that the android induced the social transmission of disinhibition. Also, children were more likely to be affected by the human model than by the android. The results suggested that behavioral cues (biological movement) may be important for the social transmission of disinhibition.

Effects of alfacalcidol alone or in combination with elcatonin on incidence of osteoporotic vertebral fractures in postmenopausal women with spondylosis.

Osteoporosis and spondylosis often occur simultaneously. However, there are no previous reports about the effects of osteoporosis medication on incidence of vertebral fractures in people with spondylosis. In this study, we conducted a retrospective investigation of the effects of alfacalcidol alone or in combination with elcatonin on incidence of osteoporotic vertebral fractures in women with spondylosis. The present subjects were 101 postmenopausal women with osteoporosis aged >60 years, divided into three groups: D group (n = 45), treated for >5 years with alfacalcidol; D+ECT group (n = 26), treated for >5 years with alfacalcidol plus elcatonin; control group (n = 30), who received no medications for >5 years. Over the 5-year treatment period, bone mineral density (BMD) of the lumbar spine and proximal femur did not significantly change in the D and D+ECT groups, but they significantly decreased in the control group (P < 0.05). The number of incident vertebral fractures per patient was significantly higher in the control group (2.9) than in the D group (1.2) and D+ECT group (1.5) (P < 0.01). There was no significant difference in BMD or incident vertebral fractures between the D and D+ECT groups. In all three groups, the number of incident vertebral fractures positively correlated with the number of prevalent vertebral fractures (0.303

Hybrid functional electrical stimulation with medial linkage knee-ankle-foot orthoses in complete paraplegics.

We have previously restored ambulation in paraplegics by performing hybrid functional electrical stimulation (FES) with medial linkage knee-ankle-foot orthosis (MLKAFO). The most common MLKAFO (hinge-type MLKAFO) has the hypothetical axis that is lower than the physiological hip joint position, resulting in slow velocity and short step length. A new MLKAFO (sliding-type MLKAFO), which uses sliding medial linkages, has been developed to correct the axial discrepancy of the hinge-type MLKAFO that causes limited hip joint excursion. There have been reports of instability associated with sliding medial linkages, but the mechanism of this instability is unclear. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of FES with MLKAFOs on ambulation in paraplegics. Two complete paraplegic patients (levels T8 and T12, respectively) participated in this study. Kinematics data during ambulation were obtained using a motion analysis system. We measured gait velocity and hip progression during the standing phase. The sliding-type MLKAFO produced faster gait velocity than did the hinge-type MLKAFO, but it caused pelvis instability without FES. Pelvis instability was controlled by hybrid FES using the sliding-type MLKAFO. With hybrid FES, the sliding-type MLKAFO provides better gait performance than the hinge-type MLKAFO, but the hinge-type MLKAFO provides greater pelvis stability during walking. Moreover, FES provides sufficient propulsion to allow the complete paraplegics to walk.

Evaluating the human likeness of an android by comparing gaze behaviors elicited by the android and a person.

Our research goal is to discover the principles underlying natural communication among individuals and to establish a methodology for the development of expressive humanoid robots. For this purpose we have developed androids that closely resemble human beings. The androids enable us to investigate a number of phenomena related to human interaction that could not otherwise be investigated with mechanical-looking robots. This is because more human-like devices are in a better position to elicit the kinds of responses that people direct toward each other. Moreover, we cannot ignore the role of appearance in giving us a subjective impression of human presence or intelligence. However, this impression is influenced by behavior and the complex relationship between appearance and behavior. This paper proposes a hypothesis about how appearance and behavior are related, and maps out a plan for android research to investigate this hypothesis. We then examine a study that evaluates the human likeness of androids according to the gaze behavior they elicit. Studies such as these, which integrate the development of androids with the investigation of human behavior, constitute a new research area that fuses engineering and science.

Inverse relation between osteoporosis and spondylosis in postmenopausal women as evaluated by bone mineral density and semiquantitative scoring of spinal degeneration.

STUDY DESIGN: The relation between bone mineral density and severity of spondylosis was evaluated in postmenopausal women. OBJECTIVE: To examine the possible inverse relation between osteoporosis and spondylosis by evaluating the association between bone mineral density and osteophyte formation or intervertebral disc narrowing using a semiquantitative scoring system. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: The literature contains studies demonstrating an inverse relation between osteoporosis and spondylosis as well as those documenting insufficient support for such a relation. However, in these studies, only limited-range grading systems (e.g., Grades 1-4) were used to evaluate the severity of spondylosis. METHODS: In this study, 104 postmenopausal women older than 60 years underwent bone mineral density measurement of the lumbar spine (anteroposterior, lateral, and midlateral) and proximal femur (femoral neck, trochanter, and Ward's triangle) using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. Raw data representing the semiquantitative osteophyte score and disc score as well as the number of vertebral fractures were obtained using spinal radiograph. Correlations between bone mineral density and the radiographic variable were then analyzed. RESULTS: Significant negative correlations were found between all bone mineral density data and the number of vertebral fractures (-0.524 < or r= r < or = -0.347; P < 0.05). Marginal/moderate positive correlations were observed between the osteophyte score and the bone mineral density data (0.263 < or = r < or = 0.580, P < 0.05), and between the disc score and the bone mineral density data (0.233 < or = r < or = 0.570, P < 0.05).CONCLUSIONS On the basis of the finding that spondylotic changes in postmenopausal women exhibit positive correlations not only with the lumbar bone mineral density, but also with the remote-site bone mineral density, this study supports the view that osteoporosis has an inverse relation with spondylosis.