sonzai-kan

I found an interesting blog on robots and human interaction ...

http://glendashaw-garlock.blogspot.com/2008/04/sonzai-kan-and-social-robots.html

"The Japanese have a word, sonzai-kan, which roughly translates as "presence." It's what we feel when someone is standing next to us. Film maker Phie Ambo explores this idea with robotics engineer, Hiroshi Ishiguro, creator of highly sophisticated androids in her latest documentary, Mechanical Love. Ishiguro is interested in the conveyance of sonzai-kan, or human presence, and the best way to evoke this sensation of “presence” within a robot’s human social partner. Or, wonders Ishiguro, will it be found that highly anthropomorphic social robots are always regarded as uncanny and strange, as roboticist Masahiro Mori (1970) once conjectured? “Simply put, what gives something a social presence? Is it mainly behaviour, or is there instead some complex interplay between appearance and behaviour?” (MacDorman and Ishiguro, 2005, p. 1)."

"Understanding the Mechanism of Sonzai-Kan":
http://www.irc.atr.jp/Geminoid/Data/panel-20060719-mod2-eOnly.pdf

"Meet the Remote-Control Self": http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/07/71426

"Geminoid: Teleoperated Android of an Existing Person":
http://s.i-techonline.com/Book/Humanoid-Robots-New-Developments/ISBN978-3-902613-00-4hrnd20.pdf

A related youtube documentary ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF-K5g0inq0

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