Acceptance of a minimal design of a human infant for facilitating affective interaction with older adults: A case study toward interactive doll therapy

H. Sumioka, M. Shiomi, N. Yamato and H. Ishiguro, "Acceptance of a minimal design of a human infant for facilitating affective interaction with older adults: A case study toward interactive doll therapy*," 2020 29th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Naples, Italy, 2020, pp. 775-780, doi: 10.1109/RO-MAN47096.2020.9223613.The 29th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication [31 AUG - 04 SEPT, 2020

Persistence of the uncanny valley: the influence of repeated interactions and a robot's attitude on its perception

Zlotowski J, Sumioka H, Nishio S, Glas DF, Bartneck C, Ishiguro H. Persistence of the uncanny valley: the influence of repeated interactions and a robot's attitude on its perception. Frontiers in Psychology. 2015;6:883

An Evolutionarily Threat-Relevant Odor Strengthens Human Fear Memory.

Olfaction is an evolutionary ancient sense, but it remains unclear to what extent it can influence routine human behavior. We examined whether a threat-relevant predator odor (2-methyl-2-thiazoline) would contextually enhance the formation of human fear memory associations. Participants who learned to associate visual stimuli with electric shock in this predator odor context later showed stronger fear responses to the visual stimuli than participants who learned in an aversiveness-matched control odor context. This effect generalized to testing in another odor context, even after extinction training. Results of a separate experiment indicate that a possible biological mechanism for this effect may be increased cortisol levels in a predator odor context. These results suggest that innate olfactory processes can play an important role in human fear learning. Modulatory influences of odor contexts may partly explain the sometimes maladaptive persistence of human fear memory, e.g., in post-traumatic stress disorders

Huggable Communication Medium Maintains Level of Trust during Conversation Game

There have been several attempts in recent years to develop a remote communication device using sensory modalities other than speech that would induce a user’s positive experience with his/her conversation partner. Specifically, Hugvie is a human-shaped pillow as well as a remote communication device enabling users to combine a hugging experience with telecommunication to improve the quality of remote communication.The present research is based on the hypothesis that using Hugvie maintains users’level of trust toward their conversation partners in situations prone to suspicion. Thelevel of trust felt toward other remote game players was compared between participants using Hugvie and those using a basic communication device while playing a modified version of Werewolf, a conversation-based game, designed to evaluate trust. Although there are always winners and losers in the regular version of Werewolf, the rules were modified to generate a possible scenario in which no enemy was present among the players and all players would win if they trusted each other. We examined the effect of using Hugvie while playing Werewolf on players’ level of trust toward each other and our results demonstrated that in those using Hugvie, the level of trust toward other players was maintained

An Information-Theoretic Approach to Quantitative Analysis of the Correspondence Between Skin Blood Flow and Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Measurement in Prefrontal Cortex Activity

Effect of Skin blood flow (SBF) on functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurement of cortical activity proves to be an illusive subject matter with divided stances in the neuroscientific literature on its extent. Whereas, some reports on its non-significant influence on fNIRS time series of cortical activity, others consider its impact misleading, even detrimental, in analysis of the brain activity as measured by fNIRS. This situation is further escalated by the fact that almost all analytical studies are based on comparison with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). In this article, we pinpoint the lack of perspective in previous studies on preservation of information content of resulting fNIRS time series once the SBF is attenuated. In doing so, we propose information-theoretic criteria to quantify the necessary and sufficient conditions for SBF attenuation such that the information content of frontal brain activity in resulting fNIRS times series is preserved. We verify these criteria through evaluation of their utility in comparative analysis of principal component (PCA) and independent component (ICA) SBF attenuation algorithms. Our contributions are 2-fold. First, we show that mere reduction of SBF influence on fNIRS time series of frontal activity is insufficient to warrant preservation of cortical activity information. Second, we empirically justify a higher fidelity of PCA-based algorithm in preservation of the fontal activity's information content in comparison with ICA-based approach. Our results suggest that combination of the first two principal components of PCA-based algorithm results in most efficient SBF attenuation while preserving maximum frontal activity's information. These results contribute to the field by presenting a systematic approach to quantification of the SBF as an interfering process during fNIRS measurement, thereby drawing an informed conclusion on this debate. Furthermore, they provide evidence for a reliable choice among existing SBF attenuation algorithms and their inconclusive number of components, thereby ensuring minimum loss of cortical information during SBF attenuation process

In silico case studies of compliant robots: AMARSI deliverable 3.3

In the deliverable 3.2 we presented how the morphological computing ap- proach can significantly facilitate the control strategy in several scenarios, e.g. quadruped locomotion, bipedal locomotion and reaching. In particular, the Kitty experimental platform is an example of the use of morphological computation to allow quadruped locomotion. In this deliverable we continue with the simulation studies on the application of the different morphological computation strategies to control a robotic system

Comparative evaluation of approaches in T.4.1-4.3 and working definition of adaptive module

The goal of this deliverable is two-fold: (1) to present and compare different approaches towards learning and encoding movements us- ing dynamical systems that have been developed by the AMARSi partners (in the past during the first 6 months of the project), and (2) to analyze their suitability to be used as adaptive modules, i.e. as building blocks for the complete architecture that will be devel- oped in the project. The document presents a total of eight approaches, in two groups: modules for discrete movements (i.e. with a clear goal where the movement stops) and for rhythmic movements (i.e. which exhibit periodicity). The basic formulation of each approach is presented together with some illustrative simulation results. Key character- istics such as the type of dynamical behavior, learning algorithm, generalization properties, stability analysis are then discussed for each approach. We then make a comparative analysis of the different approaches by comparing these characteristics and discussing their suitability for the AMARSi project