How contingent should a lifelike robot be? The relationship between contingency and complexity

We believe that lifelikeness is important to make it possible for a communication robot to interact naturally with people. In this research we investigate the relationship between contingency and complexity in a lifelike robot. We have developed a robot control system to experimentally control contingency and complexity in interaction by combining a humanoid robot with a motion-capturing system. Two independent experiments were conducted with different levels of interaction complexity: simple interaction and complex interaction. Experiments in the simple interaction situation indicated that subjects felt that the robot behaved autonomously when contingency was low, and there was no significant relationship between contingency and a lifelike impression. On the other hand experiments in the complex interaction situation showed that the robot gave the subjects the impression of being more autonomous and lifelike when contingency was high.