Studying laughter in combination with two humanoid

Authors: Christian BeckerAsano Takayuki Kanda Carlos Ishi Hiroshi Ishiguro

Publish Date: 2010/11/24

Volume: 26, Issue: 3, Pages: 291-300

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Abstract

To let humanoid robots behave socially adequate in a future society we started to explore laughter as an important paraverbal signal known to influence relationships among humans rather easily We investigated how the naturalness of various types of laughter in combination with different humanoid robots was judged first within a situational context that is suitable for laughter and second without describing the situational context Given the variety of human laughter do people prefer a certain style for a robot’s laughter And if yes how does a robot’s outer appearance affect this preference if at all Is this preference independent of the observer’s cultural background Those participants who took part in two separate online surveys and were told that the robots would laugh in response to a joke preferred one type of laughter regardless of the robot type This result is contrasted by a detailed analysis of two more surveys which took place during presentations at a Japanese and a German high school respectively From the results of these two surveys interesting intercultural differences in the perceived naturalness of our laughing humanoids can be derived and challenging questions arise that are to be addressed in future research

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