A constructive approach for communication robots

摘要

In the past several years, many humanoid robots have been developed based on the most advanced robotics technologies. If these human-like bodies are used effectively during interaction, these robots will be capable of smooth and natural communication with humans. We believe such robots will exist as our partners in daily life and will serve to keep us informed, through their communication functions. That is, communication robots will become a new form of information media. Unfortunately, robots are still uncapable of these level of communica-tion with humans. We presume that this is because of the following two reasons. First, many researchers assume communication robots are simi-lar to industrial robots, which enactly perform precise human commands. Contrarily, we believe that in order to achieve natural communication, it is necessary that robots behave as our partner, not as our slaves, and to ac-tually perform bi-directional communication. The second problem is the