人と関わりやすいロボットとは
近年，人間らしさを持つロボットの研究が盛んに行なわれており，外見が人と瓜二つのロボットが実現されるなど，非言語的側面の技術の実用化が進んでいる．一方，人が意思疎通を実感できるほどには，自然言語処理技術の活用は進んでおらず，対話の中でロボットの非言語的人間らしさがどのように活かされるかも充分検証が進んでいない．本講演では，人と関わるロボットの研究動向を紹介するとともに，自閉スペクトラム症児を遠隔操作ロボットと対話させる実験を紹介し，視線や発話の分析から，人型ロボットを療育に応用する可能性を示す．また複数台のロボットが高度な自然言語処理を用いずに，人に高度な対話感を与える対話ができる例を紹介し，人が関わりやすい形態として，人と複数台のロボットの間の言語的コミュニケーションの可能性を議論する．
Robots with which Humans Can Easily Communicate
In recent years, research on humanlike robots has attracted great attention. Technologies for nonverbal aspects have become so sophisticated that android robots which closely resemble humans have emerged. On the other hand, it still remains difficult for humans to establish mutual understanding with robots as technologies for verbal aspects are not sufficiently developed. Even applications of robots utilizing nonverbal humanlike features in communication have not been sufficiently investigated. In this presentation, the results of experiments in which children with autism spectrum disorders are asked to talk to a human or a tele-operated robot will be introduced. The potentials of humanlike robots for education and rehabilitation will be argued based on analyses of children’s gaze and utterances. Then, by introducing cases in which multiple robots were able to provide people with strong feelings of communicative engagement without natural language processing, the potentials of human-multi-robots communication will be argued as a feasible form of communication that is easy for humans to engage in.
（The lecture will be given in Japanese. The powerpoint presentation will include some English.）