This paper investigates impressions of approach motions of a mobile robot based on psychophysiological analysis. In one of our previous studies, we suggested that actuation noise caused by the robots tended to raise the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) response of heart rate variability. In another experiment it was observed that blocking out either the sound or the sight of the robot motion attenuated the electrodermal activity (EDA), which reflects the SNS. From these investigations, one candidate for motion rules for humanfriendly robots was deduced such that robots must reduce their motion speed in the immediate vicinity of human. To confirm validity of the motion rule, we constructed an experimental setup with a mobile robot approaching humans at several speeds, and investigated the human impressions by means of psychophysiological methods. The experimental results showed that robot motion adjacent to humans tended to increase EDA responses. We found especially that the approach motion tented to give stronger stimuli to humans than motions at a distance. The faster approach motion tended to increase EDA responses, but there was no significant statistical difference from the response to slower approach motion. From factor analysis of the subjective ratings two factors were extracted, which were interpreted as "relief of mind" and "observation on motion."

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Alshacl-This paper addresses the issue or investigating the relationship between Skin Potential Response (SPR) and robol motion from the aspect of auditory and visual modalities. The motion of the robotic devices primarily gave stimulus lo the human thmugh the auditory and visual modalities. Our previous work indicated that actuation noise caused from the robots tended to raise the sympathetic nerve system response ofthe heart rate variability. However it was diilicult to evaluate instantaneous response corresponding to a specific stimulus using the HRV. The SPR is possible to d e c t the instantaneous response la the stimulus. In the experiment, we controlled the conditions of the visual and/or auditory modalities by blocking out the sound and sight from the robot, a manipulator with 5 D.O.F. We also changed the position of the robot around subjects for stimuli variety. As the result, it is shown that the SPR magnitudes, under the condition of bloeking out not only the sound but also the sight from the robot, tended to be significantly lower than without hloeking.

Autonomous four-wheeled robots have been widely studied and developed for various purposes over several decades. We have developed an All Terrain Vehicle(ATV)-based, four-wheeled, car-like robot to support the environmental field survey of landfills. Navigating the robot toward an observation spot must have feedback control of the vehicle. We propose a path-generating regulator (PGR) for car-like robots and show the properties of its control performance. Originally, the PGR was a control method for two-wheeled mobile robots to converge at the origin of a coordinate frame, of which the heading angle is controlled so as to align the tangential angle of one of the path among the path function group. Unlike

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This paper investigates impressions on the robot motion based on EDA experiments, deduces a motion rule for human-friendly robots from the investigations, and applies it to a mobile robot experimental apparatus. In our previous work, it was suggested that actuation noise come from the robots tended to raise the sympathetic nerve system (SNS) response of the heart rate variability. In another experiment it is observed that blocking out either the sound or the sight attenuated the electrodermal activity (EDA), which reflects the SNS, to the robot motion. In the present work, the experiment was designed not so as to avoid the influence of the habituation differently from the previous experiments, which was the significant factor contributing to reducing the EDA responses. As a result of statistical analysis, it was concluded that the present work supported the result of the previous work. Based on these investigations, we deduced the motion rule for human-friendly robots from this investigation, that robots must reduce their motion speed in the immediate vicinity of humans.We constructed the experimental setup that a mobile robot approached human with its speed decreased in conformity with the rule. To estimate the distance from the human, the skin color detection and depth-from-focus techniques were applied to a monocular color video camera system with pan/tilt/zoom operation. The experimental result showed that a proper choice of commands could perform the robot motion to reduce its speed in the immediate vicinity of the human.

In this paper, the path-generating regulator is extended to tracking problem along a straight passage for two-wheeled mobile robots. As most of mobile robots are with nonholonomic constraints, it is difficult for us to make them converge to the target state with a control law. To solve this problem, many methods have been proposed. One of them is Path-generating Regulator(PGR) which designs a nonlinear regulator carrying out asymptotic convergence to a given trajectory family. However, the original method is not well suited for passages. In this paper, we will present the extended PGR for the tracking problem along a straight passage. Numerical simulations and experiments are also performed to show the effectiveness of this method.