Minori Furusawa

To improve the sense of security and friendliness of a robot that is supposed to be in contact with the user during use, such as a tapping robot, this study devised the idea of giving fur to the robot's appearance. Through impression evaluation experiments, the authors investigated how the biological nature and affinity given to the user changes when the robot is given fur on its appearance. The results of the experiment revealed that users felt more biological when the robot's mechanical mechanisms were covered with fur than when they were covered with cloth or plastic. In addition, it was found that the fur did not significantly differ from cloth or plastic in terms of familiarity, and that familiarity was significantly improved only when the robot was covered with fur. The results of this study suggest that biomimicry by fur gives a positive impression to robots that interact with users and has a positive impact on interaction.