16th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication

TA2-1

August 26 ~ 29, 2007 / Jeju, Korea

RobotMeme—A Proposal of Human-Robot Mimetic Mutual Adaptation—
Daisuke Komagome, Michio Suzuki, Tetsuo Ono and Seiji Yamada
Abstract—In late years, as new media turning into PC or mobile
phone, a study about communication robots is prosperous.
Robots are different from the conventional media, because robots
have physical bodies like humans, so it is reported that humans
bemust robots socially. Therefore, we decide to apply a conceptof meme as a cultural gene to an interaction design with humans
and robots in this study. By this design theory, we will realize
Mimetic Mutual Adaptation by humans and robots imitating
and adapting each other, exceeding a conventional form of oneway adaptation from humans to the media. Therefore, we called
cultural information transmitted from robots "RobotMeme",
we try that robots acquire cultural behaviors shared by humansociety and the robots transmits these meme to other robots by
Human-Robot Mimetic Mutual Adaptation. Furthermore, wesuggest "A Design of RobotMeme" to realize that robots create
new cultural behaviors through human-robot interaction. In
this paper, we describe an early stage of experiments to inspect
whether RobotMeme were transmitted to human and observedthat humans acquired original cultural behaviors of robots byimitation. From the results of these experiments, it is suggested
that robots and human are going to be able to form the relationsof interdependence by imitating each other.

I. INTRODUCTION"I want to create robots which have bodies and behaves
like human in order to adapt to the society of human," many researchers on robotics have such strong wishes, andvarious robots have been developed in late years. The researchers have constructed models of intellectual development, and they have driven for designing robots that adapt
to human society in robotics. But, traditional artiﬁcial intelligence could cover only limited ﬁeld such as chess games.
Therefore, many researchers on robotics are interested incasual intelligence and embodiment of human being. In
such background, there are a lot of researches about communication robots such as ASIMO or wakamaru that behave like humans with physical bodies such as heads or arms
in recent years. The meanings of that robots which have thebodies like humans are adaptation to human society. Brooks
Daisuke Komagome and Micho Suzuki are with the Department of System
Information Science Research, Graduate School of Future UniversityHAKODATE, 116-2 Kameda Nakano, Hakodate-shi, Hokkaido, 041-8655
JAPAN (e-mail:g2107011@fun.ac.jp, g2107018@fun.ac.jp)
Tetsuo Ono is with Future University-HAKODATE, 116-2 Kameda Nakano,
Hakodate-shi, Hokkaido, 041-8655 JAPAN (e-mail:tono@fun.ac.jp)
Seiji Yamada is with National Institute of Informatics, 2-1-2 Chiyoda,
Tokyo, 101-8430 JAPAN (e-mail:seiji@nii.ac.jp)

978-1-4244-1635-6/07/$25.00

2007 IEEE.

stated that robot will be able to natural interaction to human,and support human sharing environment designed for humanusing rich non-verbal information with physical bodies liked
human [1].
In addition, Sakamoto showed robot’s sociability among
three persons relation (two persons and a robot) based on thebalance theory, therefore it is inspired the possibilities of thatrobot has a inﬂuence on a relation between humans not only
a person as a social media [2]. That is to say, we must design
robots adapting to human society, and robots need to acquiresociety and social skill for adapting to environments.
Therefore, we need to design robots as social media througha new approach. In the traditional media design, it aimed toadapt artifact to human based on ergonomics or cognitiveengineering. However, we consider that it is not enough for
robots to adapt to human one-sidedly in order to establish
friendly relations between human and robots. Ueda performedexperiments showing that human and agent formed smooth
relation through mutual adaptation learning, and inspired thepossibilities of that humans and agents are co-developmentby adapting to each other [3]. From this, the phenomenon ofmutual adaptation will be important in order to consider the
methodology of Human-Agent Interaction.
However, our purpose is realization of collective intelligence of robots by sharing adaptive knowledge and methodology provided from mutual adaptation learning between
human and robots. Therefore, we apply “meme” suggested
by Richard Dawkins to Human-Robot Interaction [4]. By
this idea, in the future, robots living with us spread the bestinteraction skill which was acquired through interaction
with humans to other persons or robots, robots will be adapt
to human society gradually and robots will be the media
offering a new cultural knowledge to people. We expect thathumans and robots will form interdependent relation and they
maintain stable balance in long term by exchanging and cocreating their own valuable knowledge or technology eachother.
Therefore, we performed pilot experiments in order toinspect whether the third person imitates robot’s originalcommunication method through Human-Robot Interaction.
It is understood that humans sympathize with robot’s behaviors, but real-time imitation can’t indicate that humans
acquire robot’s original behaviors. Therefore, if humans
express robot’s original interaction behaviors by delayed
imitation, there is strong possibility that humans imitate robot’s original behaviors from now on, and it is suggested thatthe interaction design of robots based on “RobotMeme” will
be useful in order to build interdependent relation between
humans and robots.
In this paper, we propose a concept of meme in Section 2,
and explain a summary of “Mimetic Mutual Adaptation in427

Section 3. Furthermore, we refer to the methods and resultsof the experiments of robot meme transmitting in Section 4,
and we discuss a concept of RobotMeme and Human-Robot
Mimetic Mutual Adaptation (HRMMA) from results of theexperiments in Section 5.
II. IMITATION AND MEME
In this section, we discuss the important essence of a conceptof meme that is the base of an idea of RobotMeme andMimetic Mutual Adaptation we propose, and we state memeand diffusion of meme in this section.
A.Meme“Meme” was named by Dawkins, and it means “a cultural
information which descended by imitation” [4]. Meme isthe unit of information transmitted by imitation repeatingpreservation, variation and selection similar to gene’s behavior. As examples of meme, we give technical cultures
such as usage or dance, and favorite phrase or greeting whichshared in a community such as family or friends. We consider
that meme has intention of self-preservation same as gene,and spreads from a brain to other brains like virus without
being conscious of doing or not. Blackmore insists thathuman beings are different from other creatures, because theevolution of human beings is affected by meme, and memeis the major factor in acquiring huge brain and special ability
such as language [5].
Figure.1 shows the image of meme spreading. It is clearthat when a person who acquired knowledge or techniquesuch as how to use tools or technical ideas that adapted thesituation heuristically, these knowledge and technique are
spread to other people by imitations. As a result, our civilization was highly developed. In this study, we apply this idea
to interaction design of robots as the most important essenceof a concept of meme.
B.Transmission of MemeFor the spread of meme, imitation in communication plays
an important role. However, the spread of meme does notalways occur from direct communication. For example, theway of greeting or usage of honoriﬁc will be able to acquireby seeing the interactions of other person without gazing
from a viewpoint of the third person. In addition, it is said
that people synchronize their bodies rhythmically with
their partner in interaction [6]. We consider the third person
acquired the methods of natural communication from thosesynchronized interaction.
In other way, meme is also spread not only from the interaction between human and human. For example, there isa phenomenon that people often imitate other people in frontof them, because of cultural difference. In addition, a lot of
people had the experience that they were infected with hums
and phrases other people have without notice. In other words,
a difference between the spread of meme and the spread of
information is that meme transmits by unconscious imitation.

Figure.1 An Idea of Meme Theory. Meme moves to other humans bycommunication and imitation. Meme bahaves like gene (repeatingpreservation, variation and selection).

III. MIMETIC MUTUAL ADAPTATIONIn this section, we state four purposes and methods to realize
Human-Robot Mimetic Mutual Adaptation (Figure 2).
1.Robots learns humans meme
Human → Robot
2.Humans learns cross-cultural meme through robots
Robot → Human
3.Robots transmits the most adaptive meme to others
Robot → Robot
4.Robots spread the varied meme it created to others
Robot → Human & Robot
Robots learning meme by imitation humans
At first, we will get motion data of a natural interaction
between humans by motion capture system, and make therobot learn Human Meme. We consider robots will be able
to communicate and sympathize with humans naturally by
the robots acquiring social skill [7]. Therefore, robots needto learn various meme, and we must grope for the methods todivide motions blocked with a meaning.
Humans learning culture by embodiment of robots
We try to promote understanding of embodied intelligencethat is difficult to acquire by traditional static archives, andtransmit meme with physical movement such as greetings ordances to human through robots not only interaction skill.
Robots seem to be considered the media which saves every
cultural physical movement as dynamic archive, therefore
we expect that robots is used by cross-cultural education orcoaching [8]. Consequently, we must consider the structuresthat extracting characteristic points of physical behavior and428

promoting physical learning.
Robots acqure the most adaptive meme and adapt tocommunity
When a robot communicates with persons, the robot discovers the meme which adapted the environment while
making trial and error from the meme which the robot
learned in the upper of Figure.2, and we approach to makethe whole robots adapt itself to community such as schools
or companies by spreading the most adaptive meme to otherrobots. Robots are the media that can move in real world
autonomously, therefore we expect that robots become thesocial being adapting to every community. For example,
robots must select the greetings the same as children inelementary schools, and robots must speak slowly in nursing homes. In this study, using Classifier System (CS), we
consider the robot system that learn the meme adapting toreal environment changing dynamically in interaction withhumans repeating genetic behavior, and spreading the mostadaptive meme to other robots. In the case of the meme
spreading, we must treat motion data abstractly to transformdifferences of the structures of robots.
Robots create and spread their own meme to humans
When a robot acquires the meme which is the adaptive
methods to the environment in the middle of Figure 2, we aim
at acquisition of the new meme that humans couldn’t acquireby robots creating it’s own cultural behavior through verifying
the meme which acquired using Genetic Algorithm (GA).
We consider it is possible to improve the cultural adaptationof whole human society by humans acquiring the unknown
methodologies not existed in human society through robots.
However, it is doubted whether humans accepts the original
behavior of robots as artifact. Therefore, we performed theexperiments of RobotMeme transmitting in order to conﬁrm
that humans imitating robot’s communication methods.
IV. EXPERIMENTIn this section, we explain the pilot experiment aimed at
inspecting whether humans imitate the robot’s peculiar
methods of direction (RobotMeme) in detail. In addition, we
define meme as "a communication method using physicalbehavior" in these experiments.
A.Outline of Experiments
In these experiments, experimenter instructs to participants to direct the experimental cooperator to do the task
to move objects. We performed three kinds of experiments(experiment A, B and C) and each experiment has two
conditions (condition A1 and A2, B1 and B2, C1 and C2).
This experiment assumes the situation that participants
direct to the experimental cooperator who can’t understandwords, we inspects that participants express the robot meme(the method of robots) transmitted from human-robot
interaction. Therefore, we inspected the general instruction
methods of human in the experiment A including condition
A1 and A2. Based on the experiment A, we decided the

Figure.2 A Concept of Human-Robot Mimetic Mutual Adaptation (HRMMA).
We set four aims. HumanMeme and RobotMeme spread out other humans or
robots by imitating and communicating.

rational instruction methods for robot but not for human,and performed the experiment of RobotMeme transmitting
as experiment B including condition B1 and B2. In addition,
we performed experiment C (including condition C1 and C2)
with the participants of the experiment B that changed theobjects to direct and the experimental cooperator. Throughthe experiment C we inspected that RobotMeme is part ofparticipants’ nature.
Experimental environment
These experiments were performed in Media Laboratory of
research center in Future University-HAKODATE. We used
Robovie-R ver.2 that is a communication robot developed
by ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research InstituteInternational) in these experiments. The experimenter
instructed to participants in the Media Laboratory, andanother experimenter operated the robot in another room
(Figure.3). We used six ﬁgures have bodies like human in theexperiment A and B, seven posing movie character's posters
in the experiment C as the objects to direct (Figure.4).
Experimental conditions
The experiments have the following six conditions (threeexperiments and each experiment have two conditions). The
setting of condition C1 was the same as condition C2, but
we analyze the result of experiments as the participants ofcondition C1 are the same as condition B1 and the participants of condition C2 are the same as condition B2, therefore
we divide condition between C1 and C2.
A1: Not giving any restrictions to the participants when they
direct to the experimental cooperator.
A2: Instructing the participants not to move from theposition approximately 4 meters away from the experimental cooperator, beyond that, not giving any restrictions to theparticipants when they direct to the experimental cooperator.
B1: The robot direct by pointing at the position approximately
4 meters away from the experimental cooperator, then theparticipants are requested to direct to the experimental
cooperator instead of the robot.

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B2: The robot direct by gesture at the position approximately
4 meters away from the experimental cooperator, then theparticipants are requested to direct to the experimental
cooperator instead of the robot.
C1: Not giving any restrictions to the participants when they
direct to the experimental cooperator.
C2: Not giving any restrictions to the participants when they
direct to the experimental cooperator.
The robot shows OK signature by raising arms, when the experimental cooperator obeyed instruction of the robot correctly in condition B1 and B2. The experimental cooperator
behaves likewise gestures or OK signature of the robot, andthe experimental cooperator looks at the same direction of thepointing the robot behaves, so joint attention was formed.

Figure.3 Experimental Environment (Experiment B). The participant see therobot directing to the experimental cooperator. After the robot broken, theparticipant select the robot's direction way.

B.Experimental Scenario
We explain the detailed procedure of each experiment.
1. Experiment A (Condition A1 and A2)
Instructing “Choose two ﬁgures in three on the desk of theleft side, and direct that man to move the two figures you
chose to the desk of the right side.” to the participants.
2. Experiment B (Condition B1 and B2)
At first, the experimenter explains the participants “Fromnow, the robot chooses ﬁve ﬁgures in six on the desk of theleft side, and direct that man to move the figures the robot
chose to the desk of the right side,” the robot halts about 20
seconds after the third direction of the robot, and instructing“The robot has been broken, so choose two figures in threeleft, and direct that man to move the two ﬁgures you chose to
the desk of the right side in stead of the broken robot.” to theparticipants.
3. Experiment C (Condition C1 and C2)
Instructing “Choose two posters in seven on the white-boardof the left side, and direct that man to move the two posters
you chose into the box of the right side.” to the participants.
C.The Methods of Evaluation
At first, we confirmed that the robot’s original methodsof direction (RobotMeme) transmitted to the participantsfrom video records. And, the participants fill their subjective evaluation in questionnaire (Table.1). The participants
answered every question by five stages. The questionnaire
asked three questions about the robot’s methods of direction(group Q1) and the subject’s methods of direction (group
Q2). Three questions are that “Were the robot’s methods of
direction easy to understand?,” ”Were those methods thebest way?,” “Were those methods natural?.” At last, as group
Q3, we asked impression of the robot to the participants. In
addition, we asked why they answered like that in free format
in the last of each questions.

Figures (exp.A and B) Movie Posters (exp.C)

Robot (exp.B)

Figure.4 Robovie-R2(right) is the robot we used in experiment B.
Figures(left) are objects used in experiment A and B. Movie Posters(center)are objects used in experiment C.

Direction 1(close & point)

Direction 2(far & point)

Direction 3(far & gesture)

Figure.5 Methods of Directions. The participants close and point the objects
in Direction 1(left). The participants don't close and point in Direction
2(center). The participants don't close and gesture in Direction 3(right).
Table.1 Questionnaires in experiment B. In Experiment A and C, we asked
only group Q1 (Q1-1,Q1-2,Q1-3).

Q1-1
Q1-2
Q1-3
Q2-1
Q2-2
Q3-3
Q3-1
Q3-2
Q3-3

"Was your direction understood by the man ?""Was your direction the best way ?""Was your direction natural ?""Was the robot's direction easy to understand ?""Was the robot's direction the best way ?""Was the robot's direction natural ?""Was your impression to robots good ?""Can you trust robots ?""Do you want a robot ?"D.Hypothesis and Prediction of the Experiments
We decided the following three ways of direction as thecommon ways of direction of human in experiment B by the
results of the experiment A (Figure.5). And direction 1 is themost commonly way of direction.

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Table.2 Result of participants’ directing methods from video records.

Experiment & Condition
Number of Subjects
Direction1(Normal)Direction2(Long Distance)
Direction3(Gesture)
OK Signature

A1
12
11/12
(92%)
1/12
(8%)
1/12
(8%)
0/12
(0%)

A2
13
0/13
(0%)
11/13
(85%)
1/13
(8%)
0/13
(0%)

B1
12
0/12
(0%)
11/12
(92%)
0/12
(0%)
6/12
(50%)

B2
13
0/13
(0%)
2/13
(15%)
11/13
(85%)
10/13
(77%)

C1
6
3/6
(50%)
3/6
(50%)
0/6
(0%)
1/6
(17%)

C2
9
1/9
(11%)
1/9
(11%)
7/9
(78%)
2/9
(22%)

Table.3 Results of Questionnaire (Only who expressed Robot Meme in Condition B1, B2, C1 and C2)Experiment & Condition
Number of Subjects
Average of Group Q1
Average of Group Q2

A1
12
3.75
-

A2
13
4.05
-

Average of Group Q3

-

-

B1
11/12
3.82
3.33

B2
11/13
4.09
3.82

3.27

3.64

C1
3/6
3.78
-

C2
7/9
4.14
-

-

-

Direction 1: Coming up to the objects going to be selected
and pointing them.
Direction 2: Keeping the distance from the experimental
cooperator and pointing the objects.
Direction 3: Keeping the distance from the experimental
cooperator and gesturing at the features of the objects.
We considered that direction 1 is the most common way of
direction for humans and direction 3 is the most rational wayof direction for robots. Because, in this case, Robovie has thebattery and a power source plug, therefore it is hoped that the
robot works without moving. In addition, the robot doesn’t have extremity such as fingers to direct in detail and therobot can’t behave like humans, consequently we think thatthe way of gesture is more rational than the way of pointing
for the robot. And, we set the OK signature as the method to
afﬁrm the behavior of the experimental co-operator the robot’s original behavior. In this study, we determined the following
four meme as characteristic behaviors.
* Pointing Meme (HumanMeme)* Long distance Meme (RobotMeme)* Gesture Meme (RobotMeme)* OK sign Meme (RobotMeme)

Figure.6 Experimental Scenes of experiment A. Most of theparticipants selected Direction 1 in condition A1 (left). Most of theparticipants selected Direction 2 in condition A2 (right).

Figure.7 Experimental Scenes of experiment B. Most of theparticipants selected Direction 2 in condition B1 (upper). Most of theparticipants selected Direction 3 in condition B2 (lower).

In these experiments, we inspect the prediction based on thefollowing hypotheses.
Hypothesis
The participants imitate the robot’s original behaviors.
Furthermore, the methods of robots are part of participants’nature and express in similar environment.
Prediction
It is confirmed that the participants expressed RobotMeme
mentioned above in condition B1, B2, C1 and C2 by video
record.

Figure.8 Experimental Scenes of experiment C. Half of theparticipants selected Direction 2 in condition C1 (upper). Most of theparticipants selected Direction 3 in condition C2 (lower).

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Ⅵ. CONCLUSIONS & FUTURE WORK

E.Results
Table.2 shows that the participants selected the same
methods of direction as the robot in very high ratio in condition B1 and B2. However, the participants directed in same
way of the robot in high ratio in condition C2, but half ofparticipants selected direction 2 in condition C1. Comparing
incidence of the OK signature in condition B1, B2, C1 andC2, more than half of the participants imitated the behavior of
the robot in condition B1 and B2, and one-ﬁfth of the subject
imitated the robot in condition C1 and C2. From these results,
it was supported that Robot Meme also transmitted to humans
in various conditions such as the difference of the behaviors.
In addition, Q1 of Table.3 provided that the direction of therobot was evaluated higher than average in condition B1 andB2. Furthermore, Q2 of Table.3 provided that the participants
who imitated direction of the robot tended to evaluate thedirection of the subject oneself higher than the direction of
the robot. In this connection, the participants who expressed
Robot Meme in condition C1 and C2 tended to evaluate thedirection of the participants oneself higher than that of in
condition B1 and B2.

In this paper, in order to propose an idea of RobotMeme for
Human-Robot Mimetic Mutual Adaptation (HRMMA), we
showed that humans imitated the robot as artifact and affectedby RobotMeme. If robots acquired the adaptive methodologythat human society doesn’t have yet, humans could continue
cultural evolution adapting to robots and humans build thecivilization dependent on Robot Meme by the results of thisstudy. From this study, it is suggested that humans and robots
are able to co-create cultures. We must discuss the idea of
RobotMeme and HRMMA more concrete by the results ofthese experiments.
In this study, we understood that humans tend to adapt torobots by imitation. Thereupon, we are planning to design
an experiment that is able to show phenomena of spreading
RobotMeme between humans or communities. If RobotMeme
spread among humans, they will able to acquire brand-new
knowledge from Robot or Agent. We must discuss about how
Robots able to discover or generate more adaptive skills or
methods on and on.

V. DISCUSSIONACKNOWLEDGMENTS

From the results of the experiments in Section 4, it is
conﬁrmed that irrational robot’s original methods of direction
transmitted to humans, and humans expressed RobotMeme.
Therefore, it was suggested that humans are able to adapt tothe media such as robots. Most of the participants imitated theways of direction of the robot, because we think that robot’s
behaviors give some restrictions to the participants. This wascaused that most of participants couldn’t guess other ways inthe situation of these experiments by free descriptions of thequestionnaire and the oral interview. In addition, it is very
interested that most of participants evaluated the robot’s waysof direction that is irrational for humans best from Q1 of
Table.3.
Furthermore, as the clues showing that Robot Memetransmitted to humans, the participants who selected the same
way of the robot evaluated the way of participants oneself (Q2)higher than the ways of robots (Q1). In addition, it may besaid that RobotMeme was part of participants’ nature, because
the evaluation of the way of direction in condition B1 is thesame as that of B2. In other words, the participants imaginedthat the direction of the robot was rational way by expressing
the robot’s way of direction by oneself. From this, Robot
Meme was part of participants’ nature, and it is suggested thatrobot’s original culture transmitted to humans. In addition,from the results of condition C1 and C2, the characteristics
of direction will be able to effect to the rate of RobotMeme
transmission larger than the generality of direction.

The author wish to special thank to Yusaku Itagaki, Shunsuke
Tomooka, Hitoe Oya in Future University-HAKODATE andMichael FOWLER in RMIT University for their great supports for the experiments in this study.
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