Enhancing Sense of Attention from a Communication Robot by Drawing the User’s Face on Its Thought Bubble in the Video Conferencing System

In recent years, web conferencing systems have become widely used in non-face-to-face interactions. However, web conferencing systems make difficult to establish eye contact for users and can lead to decrease in non-verbal communication. In this paper, we propose a method that will enhance a user’s feeling of interlocutor’s attention, even when the line of sight does not actually match, by displaying a thought bubble for the interlocutor filled with the user’s in-camera image. Because robots have the same gaze problem as humans we thought it is important to know that this web conference system can represent the attention of a simple moving robot without using complex gaze mechanisms. So, we conducted a within-subject design experiment using a robot whose gaze and movements can be controlled and a participant as interlocutors in a web conference with and without the thought bubble. The experimental results indicate that our proposed method increased the sense of being looked at.