Two is better than one: Apologies from two robots are preferred.

Although the capabilities of service robots are increasing, avoiding any mistakes is difficult. Therefore, strategies for mitigating mistakes, such as apology behavior designs, are essential for service robots. Past studies reported that costly apology is perceived as more sincere than non-costly ones and more acceptable.

Stay away from me: Coughing increases social distance even in a virtual environment.

This study investigated whether the coughing behaviors of virtual agents encourage infection avoidance behavior, i.e., distancing behaviors.

Kawaii emotions in presentations: Viewing a physical touch affects perception of affiliative feelings of others toward an object.

We investigated how a presenter's touching behaviors of an object during its explanation affect the observer's perceived feelings of kawaii, a Japanese word that means "cute," toward the object and the presenter. We conducted a face-to-face experiment with a robot presenter as well as a web survey experiment with both robot and human presenters. Based on the phenomenon that people more firmly touch an object when their perceived kawaii feeling is overwhelmingly strong, we investigated the effects of touching behavior with emphasized styles.

The Effects of Physically Embodied Multiple Conversation Robots on the Elderly.

In recent years, communication robots aiming to offer mental support to the elderly have attracted increasing attention. Dialogue systems consisting of two robots could provide the elderly with opportunities to hold longer conversations in care homes. In this study, we conducted an experiment to compare two types of scenario-based dialogue systems with different types of bodies-physical and virtual robots-to investigate the effects of embodying such dialogue systems.