RIKEN Information R&D and Strategy Headquarters Interactive Robot Research Team

Team Director: Takashi Minato (D.Eng)

Japanese Page

Research Summary

In order to develop robots that provide casual and modest support for human daily activities, this team studies robot-human interactions such that humans are not aware of robots’ support.

Specifically, the team will promote research related to the following three themes.

*Design of a robot architecture that has cognitive functions and conversation capability
*Research on interfaces that enable robots to express natural behavior in interaction with humans
*Research and implementation to integrate various functions developed by other teams into one system

Main Research Fields

Complex Systems

Related Research Fields

Engineering
Informatics
Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering
Mathematical & Physical Sciences
Biological Sciences
Biology
Medicine, Dentistry & Pharmacy
Human interface and interaction
Intelligent robotics

Keywords

Human-robot interaction
Humanoid robot
Architecture for robot intelligence
Nonverbal communication for human-robot interaction

Selected Publications

1. Ayaka Fujii, Carlos T. Ishi, Kurima Sakai, Tomo Funayama, Ritsuko Iwai, Yusuke Takahashi, Takatsune Kumada, and Takashi Minato
"Evaluating human perceptions of android robot facial expressions based on variations in instruction styles"
Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Vol.12, No.1728647 (2025)
2. Ritsuko Iwai, Yusuke Takahashi, Carlos T. Ishi, Taiken Shintani, Takatsune Kumada
"Personality perception through prosodic features and eye movement: A cognitive constructionism approach using a social robot"
Computers in Human Behavior, No.108795 (2025)
3. Taiken Shintani, Carlos T. Ishi, and Hiroshi Ishiguro
"Gaze modeling in multi-party dialogues and extraversion expression through gaze aversion control"
Advanced Robotics, Vol.38, Issue 19-20 (2024)
4. Ird Ali Durrani, Chaoran Liu, Carlos T. Ishi, and Hiroshi Ishiguro
"Is it possible to recognize a speaker without listening? Unraveling conversation dynamics in multi-party interactions using continuous eye gaze"
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol.9, Issue 11, pp.9923-9929 (2024)
5. Takahisa Uchida, Takashi Minato, and Hiroshi Ishiguro
"Opinion Attribution Improves Motivation to Exchange Subjective Opinions with Humanoid Robots"
Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Vol.11, No.1175879 (2024)
6. Alexander Diel, Wataru Sato, Chun-Ting Hsu, and Takashi Minato
"Asynchrony enhances uncanniness in human, android, and virtual dynamic facial expressions"
BMC Research Notes, Vol.16, No.368 (2023)
7. Alexander Diel, Wataru Sato, Chun-Ting Hsu, and Takashi Minato
"Differences in configural processing for human versus android dynamic facial expressions"
Scientific Reports, Vol.13, No. 16952 (2023)
8. Bowen Wu, Chaoran Liu, Carlos T. Ishi, Jiaqi Shi, and Hiroshi Ishiguro
"Extrovert or introvert? GAN-based humanoid upper-body gesture generation for different impressions"
International Journal of Social Robotics (2023)
9. Alexander Diel, Wataru Sato, Chun-Ting Hsu, and Takashi Minato
"The inversion effect on the cubic humanness-uncanniness relation in humanlike agents"
Frontiers in Psychology, Vol.14, No.1222279 (2023)
10. Takashi Minato, Kurima Sakai, Takahisa Uchida, and Hiroshi Ishiguro
"A study of interactive robot architecture through the practical implementation of conversational android"
Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Vol.9, No.905030 (2022)

Lab Members

Principal investigator

Takashi Minato: Team Director

Core members

Carlos Toshinori Ishi: Senior Research Scientist
Kurima Sakai: Research Scientist
Takahisa Uchida: Research Scientist
Bowen Wu: Special Postdoctoral Researcher
Ayaka Fujii: Postdoctoral Researcher
Tomo Funayama: Technical Staff I
Yuka Nakayama: Technical Staff I

Contact Information

3rd Floor, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International
2-2-2 Hikaridai Seika-cho, Sorakugun, Kyoto
619-0288 Japan (Kansai Science City)
Email: takashi.minato@riken.jp