Information-theoretic investigation of impact of huggable communication medium on prefrontal brain activation^*

* This paper is selected as the ‘Cutting Edge of Robotics in Japan’ by the Editorial Committee of Advanced Robotics.

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the effect of mediated hugs that are achieved with a huggable communication medium on the brain activities of users during conversations. We measured their brain activities with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and evaluated them with two information theoretic measures: permutation entropy, an indicator of relaxation, and multiscale entropy, which captures complexity in brain activation at multiple time scales. We first verify the influence of lip movements on brain activities during conversation and then compare brain activities during tele-conversation through a huggable communication medium with a mobile phone. Our analysis of NIRS signals shows that mediated hugs decrease permutation entropy and increase multiscale entropy. These results suggest that touch interaction through a mediated hug induces a relaxed state in our brain but increases complex patterns of brain activation.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Mediated hug
• huggable communication
• telecommunication
• information theory
• permutation entropy
• multiscale entropy analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

* This paper is selected as the ‘Cutting Edge of Robotics in Japan’ by the Editorial Committee of Advanced Robotics.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by JST Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) Grant Number JPMJCR18A1, Japan, the ImPACT Program of Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan) under Grant No.: 2014-PM11-07-01, and JSPS KAKENHI, Grant No. 549 JP19K20746.

Notes on contributors

Hidenobu Sumioka

Hidenobu Sumioka received the Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 2008. From April 2008, he was a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS fellow, DC2). From April 2009, he was a researcher at Artificial intelligence Laboratory directed by Prof. Rolf Pfeifer. Since January 2012, he has been a researcher at Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR). Currently, he is the leader of Presence Media Research Group in Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories, ATR. His research interests include human-robot touch interaction, application of a social robot to elderly care, influence of social robot in brain activity, information theory.

Soheil Keshmiri

Soheil Keshmiri, is a researcher in Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories (HIL) at Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Kyoto, Japan. His research focuses on application of information theory and dynamical system analysis for modeling the neurophysiological signals in human-machine interaction. He completed his Ph.D. on multi-robot coordination and decision-making at Simon Fraser University in 2012 and was a subtheme lead at National University of Singapore where he developed algorithms to enable robots construct internal knowledge of their workspace.

Hiroshi Ishiguro

Hiroshi Ishiguro, received a D. Eng. in systems engineering from the Osaka University, Japan in 1991. He is currently Professor of Department of Systems Innovation in the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University (2009-) and Distinguished Professor of Osaka University (2017-). He is also visiting Director (2014-) (group leader: 2002–2013) of Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute and an ATR fellow. His research interests include sensor networks, interactive robotics, and android science. He received the Osaka Cultural Award in 2011. In 2015, he received the Prize for Science and Technology (Research Category) by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).