The passive

(b) interactive (c) passive-social Fig.1: Robot(s) as medium Robot Manzai – Robots' conversation as a passive social medium – Abstract-This paper reports on the development of a multi-robot cooperation system for human-robot communication. In the system, robots behave as if they are communicating by speech, but the system is designed based on communication through a network. Actual information exchanged through the network is based on analysis of inter-human conversation. This system is based on a scripting language for coordinating multi-robot communication , which has the advantage for developer's being easy to develop. The developed system is applied to " robot Manzai, " which is a Japanese comedy conversation usually performed by two people. Although tempo and timing are particularly important in Manzai, the robot Manzai system was more highly evaluated than the Manzai shown in a video performed by humans. We believe that this system demonstrates the potential of robots as a passive-social medium, similar to television and computers. I. INTRODUCTION Over the past several years, many humanoid robots have been developed that can typically make sophisticated human-like expressions. We believe that humanoid robots will be suitable for communicating with humans. The human-like bodies of humanoid robots enable humans to intuitively understand their gestures and cause them to unconsciously behave as if they were communicating with their peers. That is, if a humanoid robot effectively uses its body, people will communicate naturally with it. This could allow robots to perform communicative tasks in human society such as route guidance. Recent research in HCI (human-computer interaction) has highlighted the importance of robots as a new interface media. Reaves and Nass researched the role of computers as a new interface medium in the manner of previous media, such as television and radio, and they proved that humans act toward computer interfaces (even a simple text-based interface) as if they were communicating with other humans [1]. Cassell et al. demonstrated the importance of anthropomorphic expressions, such as arms and heads on embodied agents, for effective communication with humans [2]. Cory and Cynthia compared a robot and a computer-graphic agent and found that the robot was suitable for communication about real-world objects [3]. We believe that humanoid robots will be used as an interface medium, particularly by showing conversation among multiple robots. For example, Kanda et al. proved that users understand a robot's speech more easily and actively respond to it after observing conversation …