19th IEEE International Symposium on Robot andHuman Interactive Communication
Principe di Piemonte - Viareggio, Italy, Sept. 12-15, 2010

Experimental Investigation on a Robot-likeRemote Control with Strokes
Kazuki Kobayashi, Seiji Yamada, Shinobu Nakagawa, and Yasunori Saito
Abstract— This paper describes user studies on a novel
remote control manipulatable with stroking its surface. There
are lots of remote controls in our houses such as remote controls
for TV, air conditioner, and so on. However, when we use
a remote control, we need to look at both our ﬁngers andan appliance that we would like to control. It may be notsigniﬁcantly problematic for young people, but elderly people
have a difﬁculty in manipulating remote controls with many
buttons. We consider it will be comfortable for various people
to use a remote control without looking at their ﬁngers andpushing buttons. We also consider a remote control shouldhave robot-like appearance to become a more familiar artifact
to users. In this study, we have proposed a robot-like remotecontrol, Rebo, manipulatable only with stroking its surface
and apply to an advanced TV system. The developed remotecontrol has three advantages; familiarity, function awareness,and stroke manipulation, in contrast with conventional remotecontrols with many buttons. These advantages enable users tofeel much familiarity by using it, to easily notice its implemented
functions, and to use it without looking at the ﬁngers andbuttons. In this paper, we focus on experimental investigation
for advantages of Rebo. We conducted experiments with participants and the experimental results supported such advantages.

I. I NTRODUCTION
There are various remote controls in our houses. We haveremote controls for TV, air conditioner, room light, andso on. Home electronic remote controls are commonplacedevices and have been widely spread. However, there are
signiﬁcant problems on remote controls. For example, many
remote controls confuse us when we use appliances. A
universal remote [1] that aggregates functions of various
remote controls is one of technical solutions for this problem.
Users can control various appliances by manipulating auniversal remote control, not using speciﬁc remote controls
for each appliance. On the other hand, users for traditional
button-based remote control need to search a target button
and to correctly move the ﬁngers to push it. It may be
not signiﬁcantly problematic for young people, but elderly
people have a difﬁculty in such manipulation. We consider
Kazuki Kobayashi is with Graduate School of Science and Technology, Shinshu University, 4-17-1 Wakasato, Nagano City, 380-8553 Japankkobayashi@cs.shinshu-u.ac.jp
Seiji Yamada is with National Institute of Informatics, 2-1-2 Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda, Tokyo 101-8430, Japan and The Graduate University for
Advanced Studies, Shonan Village, Hayama, Kanagawa, 240-0193 Japanseiji@nii.ac.jp
Shinobu Nakagawa is with Design Department, Osaka University of Arts,469 Higashiyama, Kanan-cho, Minami Kawachi-gun Osaka, 585-8555 Japanshinobu@osaka-geidai.ac.jp
Yasunori
University,

Saito is with Faculty of Engineering, Shinshu
4-17-1 Wakasato, Nagano City, 380-8553 Japansaitoh@cs.shinshu-u.ac.jp

978-1-4244-7989-4/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEEit will be comfortable and easily manipulatable even for
elder people to use a remote control without looking at theﬁngers. Such a remote control is also comfortable to young
people who are familiar to home electronic appliances. We
also consider a remote control for an appliance should haverobot-like appearance to become a more familiar artifact tousers. By such an appearance, users who are not so familiar
to appliances get to use a remote control without hesitation.
We have proposed a robot-like remote control testbed,
Rebo, manipulatable only with stroking its surface and apply
to an advanced TV system. Users only stroke its surface withthe ﬁngers to control various home electronic appliances far
from them. Rebo has three advantages which conventional
remote controls have never had; familiarity, function awareness, and stroke manipulation. Its robot-like appearance andfacial expressions make it familiar with users. As for function
awareness, we adopt action sloping [2], [3] that enables themto notice its functions. Stroke manipulation enable users not
to seek a button that they want and use it easily.
In this paper, we foucs on experimental investigation
for advantages of Rebo. As a realistic example of the
proposed remote control, we develop an advanced TV system
in which action sloping is implemented. We also conduct
experiments with an eye-tracking system, and evaluate thethree advantages by investigating eye movement of users andquestionnaires.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. The concept
and the basic architecture are explained in Section II. A
remote control for an advanced TV system as an applicationof Rebo is described in Section III. In Section IV, we explain
experiments which we conduct to evaluate Rebo’s advantages
and show experimental results including questionnaires. We
present discussions in Section V and conclude our work in
Section VI.
II. ROBOT- LIKE R EMOTE C ONTROL
Figure 1 shows the developed robot-like remote control,
Rebo. Rebo is a universal remote control of home electronic
appliances. It has a user-friendly appearance; a smoothsurface for stroking and a back side ﬁt for users’ thighs.
We carefully designed the shape of Rebo with cooperationof an industrial designer, one of the authors, and determineda robot-like appearance shown in Fig. 1. We consider thissimple and robot-like appearance signiﬁcantly makes users
feel much more familiarity than conventional button-based
remote controls. This appearance makes users interested in
it and guides them to use it without hesitation. Rebo is 249
mm long, 146 mm wide, and 96 mm high.

191

Fig. 1.

Robot-like Remote Control: Rebo

Fig. 2.

Inner Structure of Rebo

A. System Architecture
Figure 2 shows the inner structure of Rebo.A display for
facial expressions, full-color LED bars, a LED controller, andthree touch devices (iPod touches) are embedded in the body.
Two iPods are used as touch sensors and the remaining one isused for displaying facial expressions. The iPod touches used
as touch sensors are covered with a soft, thin and smooth
cloth.
Touch positions are sent to a host PC through WiFi
from iPod’s web browser, Safari. We adopted Open Sound
Control (OSC) [4] as a communication protocol. When auser touches the browser on an iPod touch, a JavaScript
program is executed and then a PHP function sends OSC
packets to a connected PC. One of the embedded iPods isused for the facial expression display. An OSC server on
the PC deals with OSC packets and rewrites a local XML
ﬁle. A JavaScript program on the iPod for facial expression
periodically accesses the XML ﬁle using Ajax. According to
the XML ﬁle description, the program on the iPod changes
gif animations. The concrete facial expressions are describedin Section III-B.
Three full-color LED bars embedded in Rebo provide auser with some light-based feedback when he or she manipulates it. The user can grasp the result of their manipulationfrom their peripheral vision. The LED bars are controlled byan iPod touch. When the iPod touch receives a command tochange LED color, it sends color value to the LED controller
through serial connection. We use a programming language,
Processing, to send and receive OSC packets from a PC toan iPod touch, and to manage LED color.

expressions make it familiar with users. As for function
awareness, we adopt action sloping [2], [3] that enables
them to notice its functions. By stroke manipulation, users
do not have to seek a button that they want and use it easily.
Details are described in our previous work [5], [6]. Thoseare described brieﬂy bellow.
1) Familiarity: Rebo has a robot-like and life-like appearance (Fig. 1) and facial expressions to acquire familiarity
with a user. We adopt the concept of “intermediate entity
between artifacts and animate beings”. Rebo is not only atool but also a partner to users. The body of Rebo is covered
with soft and bouncy cloth and it is pleasant to the touch.
When the user strokes Rebo, it changes its facial expressions
to inform him or her of various emotional states. We consider
this makes the user more comfortable with Rebo. Therefore,
interaction with Rebo can be the purpose of the user as wellas manipulation of home electronic appliances. We believethat this concept plays an important role for establishingfamiliarity between users and Rebo.
2) Function Awareness: In this study, we adopt action
sloping [2], [3] that enables a user to notice its functions.
Action sloping makes machines provide feedback that gradually changes in intensity as the user carries out given
actions. As for intensity of feedback behavior, it is assumed
that the volume, frequency and quality of representation
are changed. For example, available patterns of feedback
behavior are changing lights displayed, sounds emitted, or
timing of movements.
A user interacts with Rebo by stroking it. This kindof interaction manner bears a continuous action and easily
achieves action sloping. For example, when a user strokes
Rebo for a short time to turn off the TV, Rebo decrease
the image dimensions of the TV for a short time. If theuser strokes Rebo for a long time, it decreases the image
dimensions and turns off the TV power.
3) Stroke Manipulation: Rebo has no button and a user
strokes its surface to control an appliance. In this kind ofmanipulation, he or she does not need to move the ﬁngers
correctly and not seek the button that he or she wants to push.
It is more comfortable for the user to gaze at a machine thathe or she wants to control than to gaze at the remote control
because the feedback from the machine is more important
than that from the remote control. Thus, we consider Rebo’s
manipulation by stroking has advantage over conventional
button-based remote controls.

B. Advantages of Rebo

III. R EBO AS A TV R EMOTE C ONTROL
We applied Rebo to a TV remote control and designed
feedback behavior of a TV and constructed an advanced
TV system. The advanced TV system is a simulated TV inwhich a movie player plays recorded TV programs on a PC
monitor in multiple channels like a commercial TV. Details
are described in our previous work [5], [6]. In this section,
the advanced TV system is described brieﬂy bellow.

Rebo has three advantages which conventional remotecontrols have never had; familiarity, function awareness, andstroke manipulation. Its robot-like appearance and facial

A. Stroke Manipulation
Functions we implemented in the advanced TV system
are channel select, sound volume change, and power on/off.

192

Fig. 3.

Fig. 4.

Channel Selecting

Fig. 5.

Power On and Off

Fig. 6.

Facial Expressions

IV. E XPERIMENTS

Sound Volume Changing

In this section, manipulation methods of Rebo and feedback
behavior of the TV are described.
1) Channel Select: When a user widely strokes the surface of Rebo with the ﬁngers right and left, a video picturegoes the outside of the TV frame and another video picture
comes into the frame like Fig. 3. When a user strokes Rebo
for a short time, a part of another video picture comes into
the frame and then goes out of the frame automatically.
2) Sound Volume Change: When a user strokes Rebo up
and down, the volume indicator (a vertical bar) is shown on
the video picture like Fig. 4. The length of the indicator ischanged as the movement distance of the ﬁngers is changed.
3) Power On and Off: When a user touches Rebo for morethan one second, the image dimensions of the video picture
are reduced and ﬁnally disappeared like the left picture of
Fig. 5. When the TV has been turned off, the picture is
gradually enlarged while the user touches Rebo like the right
picture of Fig. 5. If the user stops touching Rebo before thefunction is completely executed, the size of a video picture
automatically goes to a previous size.
B. Facial Expressions and LED lighting
Figure 6 shows implemented facial expressions of Rebo.
It goes a sleep mode when its surface is not touched for 10
seconds. Facial expressions are changed based on a user’s
stroke manipulation related to each function.
C. Function Awareness
Users easily manipulate it without looking at the ﬁngers
and searching buttons. They can concentrate on the feedback
from the TV monitor, but Rebo. Animations of the video
picture such as sliding and zooming are implemented basedon function awareness. They can understand the meaningof the animation based feedback from the TV before thefunction is completely executed.

We conducted experiments to evaluate the advantagesof Rebo. Impression on the appearance, usability, ease ofﬁnding functions, and eye movements were compared between Rebo and a typical TV Infrared remote (IR remote).
Eye movements were used to investigate the manipulation
without looking at Rebo. Through these experiments, weevaluate Rebo’s advantages: Familiarity, Function awareness,and Stroke manipulation.
A. Participants and Experimental Environment
Twelve male participants took part in the experiments(mean age: 23.7, S.D. = 1.9). They were undergraduate
students and graduate students of Faculty of Engineering,
Shinshu University.
We used an eye tracker Tobii T60’s LCD monitor todisplay videos that were recorded from terrestrial broadcast.
The size of the monitor was 17 inch and we set theresolution at 800 × 600 pixel. Three videos were used andits categories were news, animation, and comedy. We callthis system including the eye tracker an advanced TV systemon which various types of function awareness were implemented. Fig. 7 shows the experimental environment. The
experimenter accompanied with a participant and instructedhim.
Figure 8 shows the TV remote which we used in theexperiments. A power button, a channel select button, anda sound volume button were used. The channel select button
and the sound volume button had seesaw structures; theupper part and the lower part of the buttons can be pushedseparately. For example, when a user pushes the upper partof the channel select button, the channel is changed in theforward direction, and when he or she pushes its lower part,the channel is changed in the backward direction.
B. Procedure of the Experiments
We used a within-subject design as experimental design.
Participants used Rebo and the IR remote. The order ofproviding the devices to each participant was different among
participants and was counter balanced. The experiments

193

TABLE II NSTRUCTION OF TV MANIPULATION

Fig. 7.

No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

Experimental Environment

Instruction
Turn on the TV.
Change the channel twice.
Change the channel 4 times in reverse order.
Maximize the sound volume.
Minimize the sound volume.
Change the channel 4 times.
Raise the sound volume in the medium degree.
Change the channel twice.
Turn off the TV.
Turn on the TV.
Maximize the sound volume.
Change the channel once.
Turn off the TV.
TABLE IIR ATED ADJECTIVE PAIRS FOR IMPRESSION ON APPEARANCE

Fig. 8.

IR remotewere composed of two phases; ﬁnding functions phase andeye tracking phase. First the ﬁnding functions phase wasconducted and then the eye tracking phase was conducted.
When a participant entered an experimental room, he was
explained about the experiments. If the participant agreed
with the informed consent, we begun the experiments. The
participant was instructed to have a posture and adjust thechair to be relaxed and easy to watch a monitor.
1) Finding Function Phase: Rebo or the IR remote wasprovided for a participant. The experimenter explained himthat its functions were power on/off, channel selecting, andsound volume changing. The experimenter instructed him
to ﬁnd manipulation methods to execute these functions. A
trial was continued until a participants reported he found
all the functions or ﬁve minutes have passed. Because an
initial state of the advanced TV system was power-off, theexperimenter turned on the TV system without showing themanipulation to the participant if he could not ﬁnd the poweron manipulation for one minutes.
After the trial, the experimenter explained correct manipulation of the device to the participant and requested him totry manipulating it freely for ﬁve minutes.
Finally, he answered questionnaires about impressions andusability of the device. The participant was instructed tocheck the number which he feels about the adjective pairs.
The same procedure was conducted with the different device.
2) Eye Tracking Phase: The eye tracking phase wasconducted after the ﬁnding function phase. Rebo or the IR
remote was provided for a participant. First, calibration ofeye tracking was executed for the participant and then eye
movements were recorded. We used a Tobii T60 eye tracking

Positive

Negativelikable∗∗exciting∗∗comfortable∗ interesting∗∗warm∗∗casual∗∗friendly∗∗cute∗∗attractive
companionabledislikabledull
uncomfortableboringcold
grave
unfriendly
uncuteunattractive
uncompanionable

Rebo
IR remotet
Mean (S.D.)
Mean (S.D.)
4.50 (1.31)
4.50 (0.90)
0.00
5.42 (1.16)
3.17 (1.53)
3.39
5.58 (0.79)
4.33 (0.89)
3.80
4.92 (1.31)
3.33 (1.61)
2.50
5.58 (1.00)
2.75 (1.29)
4.71
5.50 (0.67)
3.67 (1.56)
3.63
5.67 (0.65)
3.67 (1.15)
4.51
5.67 (1.67)
3.17 (1.80)
3.19
4.25 (1.42)
2.92 (1.38)
3.75
5.83 (0.83)
4.50 (1.68)
2.11∗ p < .05∗∗ p < .01

system for this phase. After the TV system software was executed, the participant was instructed to manipulate the device
as the experimenter told to him. In addition, the participant
was instructed to concentrate the monitor and the device,and not to look at the experimenter. The experimenter stoodbehind the participant. Table I shows detailed instruction of
TV manipulation given to the participant. The experimenterdid not instruct the participant not to look at the devices andnot to use both hands.
C. Experimental Results
The experimental results of impression on appearance,ease of ﬁnding functions, usability, and eye movements are
showed as follows, respectively.
1) Impression on Appearances: Table II shows the rated
adjective pairs for impression on appearance of Rebo andthe IR remote. The adjective pairs in the table are translated
from Japanese words that we used in the questionnaire. The
ratings are based on a seven-point Likert scale (1: strong
agreement with a negative adjective, 4: neutral, 7: strong
agreement with a positive adjective). In order to compare
Rebo with the IR remote, we performed paired t test. There
were signiﬁcant differences in eight out of ten items, which
are marked with asterisks in the table. The t-values of thetests are showed in the right side of the table. All of theratings for Rebo with identiﬁed signiﬁcant differences havehigher ratings than the IR remote. The results suggest that
Rebo had higher familiarity than the typical IR remote.
2) Ease of Finding Functions: In the IR remote condition,
all of the participants were able to ﬁnd all of the functions.

194

TABLE III

TABLE IV

R ATED ADJECTIVE PAIRS FOR USABILITY

T HE NUMBER OF EYE MOVEMENTS TO THE DEVICES (N =10)

Positive

Negativeenjoyable∗ simple∗ fast∗ convenient
unmistakable∗∗easyannoying
complicatedslow
inconvenient
mistakableuneasyRebo
IR remotet
Mean (S.D.)
Mean (S.D.)
4.50 (1.24)
4.00 (0.74)
1.15
5.08 (1.16)
3.42 (1.88)
2.16
3.67 (1.50)
5.08 (1.83)-2.38
4.42 (1.44)
3.17 (1.70)
2.70
4.42 (2.07)
3.83 (1.99)
0.70
5.00 (1.48)
2.92 (1.31)
3.42∗ p < .05∗∗ p < .01

Rebo
IR remote

Mean
2.00
3.20

S.D.
2.91
2.04

TABLE VC OMMENTS FOR R EBO ’ S A PPEARANCE

In the Rebo condition, all of the participants were able toﬁnd the sound volume function and the channel selecting
function, and seven participants were able to ﬁnd the power
on/off function. The results suggested that manipulation of
Rebo in channel selecting and sound volume changing was
as easy as that of the IR remote. However, manipulation of
Rebo in the power on/off function was not easy to manipulate
and was more difﬁcult to ﬁnd it than the IR remote.
3) Usability: Table III shows the rated adjective pairs forusability. The adjective pairs in the table are translated fromJapanese words that we used in a questionnaire. The ratings
are based on a seven-point Likert scale (1: strong agreementwith a negative adjective, 4: neutral, 7: strong agreementwith a positive adjective) as well as Table II. In order tocompare Rebo with the IR remote, we performed paired t
test. There were signiﬁcant differences in four out of six
items, which are marked with asterisks in the table. The tvalues of the tests were showed in the right side of the table.
The ratings of three items for Rebo with identiﬁed signiﬁcantdifferences were higher than the IR remote. In the adjective
pair fast-slow, IR remote was recognized faster than Rebo.
The results suggested that Rebo was more simple, convenientand easy than the typical IR remote. We discuss about that
Rebo recognized slower than the IR remote in Section V.
4) Eye Movements: Table IV show the number of eye
movements to the devices. We excluded two of 12 participants’ data due to low accuracy of eye detection. The eyetrucker was able to record the eye movements in the screen.
Its sampling rate and accuracy of the eye tracking was 60Hz
and 0.5 degree, respectively. The number of eye movements
to the devices was measured by analyzing the participants’eye movement data. We employed the criteria described asfollows to measure the number of eye movements to thedevices because the eye movements to the outside of thescreen was not recorded.
Select more than two consecutive screen-outside values
to exclude noise.
• Select the values whose previous values indicate themovement to the bottom of the screen.
• Select the values whose previous value is in the bottom
part of the screen (y < 540).
•

Our hypothesis is that participants can manipulate Rebo
with less number of looking at it than the IR remote. In
order to compare Rebo with the IR remote, we performed
Wilcoxon’s signed rank test with continuity correction. Although the Rebo’s mean was less than that of the IR

Advantages
It is cute or friendly.
Its surface is good feeling.
Facial icons are comprehensive.
It is conspicuous and provides avoidance of loss.
Blinking is good.
No button design is good
Disadvantages
It is too large.
Its face and LED are unnecessary.
I am anxious about dirty by ﬁngerprints or skin oil.
It needs to improve its posture to be easily viewable.

N
7
4
3
3
2
2
N
11
7
2
2

N : the number of participants

remote, there was no signiﬁcant difference (Z = −1.18, p =0.24).We discuss about that there was no signiﬁcant difference in eye movement to the devices between Rebo and the
IR remote in Section V.
D. Participants’ comments
In the experiments, participants were interviewed on appearances and manipulation of devices. Table V and VI showsummarized participants’ comments about appearances. A
majority of participants answered “cute or friendly” for Rebo
as its advantage. Some participants answered “too large”
and “its face and LED blinking are unnecessary.” AlthoughRebo’s appearance having its face and LED is considered as
its advantage, its face and LED are considered as unnecessary. We discuss about this contradiction in Section V.
Regarding the appearance of the IR remote (Table VI),
some participants answered “the layout and touch feelingof buttons are good” as its advantage. Disadvantages are“too many buttons and confusing” and “buttons are small”
Although buttons of the IR remote are considered as its advantage, their size and quantity provide confusing impression
to participants.
Table VII and VIII show summarized participants’ comments about manipulation. Regarding Rebo (Table VII), a
majority of participants answered “intuitive and comprehensible.” However, many participants answered “the powerswitch is incomprehensible” and “direct selection of a speciﬁc channel is necessary” as its disadvantages. Rebo’s manipulation method is almost accepted by them except for the
power switch manipulation. Regarding the IR remote (Table
VIII), some participants answered “comprehensible” as its
advantage and “difﬁcult to manipulate” as its disadvantage.
Although both Rebo and the IR remote are considered as“comprehensible”, the number of participants who answered
it for Rebo is larger than that for the IR remote.

195

TABLE VI

TABLE VIIIC OMMENTS FOR IR R EMOTE ’ S A PPEARANCEC OMMENTS FOR IR R EMOTE ’ S M ANIPULATION

Advantages
The layout and touch feeling of buttons are good.
Textual information is comprehensive.
High functionality is good.
The size of the remote is good.
Disadvantages
There are too many buttons and it is confusing.
Buttons are small.
It is insipid and ordinary.
It is large.
The color combination is not likable.

N
5
3
3
2
N
5
4
2
2
2

Advantages
It is comprehensible.
It is easy to hold.
I am used to manipulating it.
Disadvantages
It is difﬁcult to manipulate.
It needs to enable number buttons.
Its response in sound volume manipulation is slow.

N
5
4
3
N
5
3
3

N : the number of participants

N : the number of participants

Regarding the result of participants’ comments, althoughRebo’s appearance having its face and LED is consideredas its advantage, its face and LED are considered as unnecessary. There is a contradiction between the comments.
We consider that the contradiction is caused by a weakassociation between facial/LED expressions and the manipulation method. Feedback by facial/LED expression is
unnecessary when they manipulate a TV because feedbackof TV manipulation is provided from the TV monitor itself.
They would consider that it is more important to reduce its
body size than to perform facial/LED expressions because
they answered Rebo is too large. Such a design problem
between a body size and functionality is an issue in the
future.

TABLE VII
C OMMENTS FOR R EBO ’ S M ANIPULATION
Advantages
It is intuitive and comprehensible.
The movie sliding animation is good.
Its response is quick.
I can manipulate it with looking at the TV monitor.
Disadvantages
The power switch is incomprehensible.
Direct selection of a speciﬁc channel is necessary.
The sliding manipulation is troublesome.

N
9
4
4
3
N
9
9
3

N : the number of participants

V. D ISCUSSIONS
The difﬁculty of ﬁnding the power on/off function of
Rebo would be caused by the long response time from theadvanced TV system. The participants obtained no cue to ﬁnd
the function. There was one second to response for the power
on/off manipulation of Rebo. This design policy was to avoid
the manipulation collision among channel selecting, soundvolume changing, and power state changing. It needs further
consideration to improve the response time and manipulation
method of all functions.
The usability investigation showed that manipulation of
Rebo was recognized slower than that of the IR remote. This
would be caused by displaying animation such as movie
sliding and zooming. A few participants pointed out thisproblem. They reported that they wanted to turn off the TV
immediately if they were busy and did not want to wait theﬁnish of turning off. Therefore, power manipulation of Rebo
would provide the slow impression.
We discuss about the eye movements investigation. Although our hypothesis was that participants can manipulate
Rebo with less number of looking at it than the IR remote,there was no signiﬁcant difference in the number of eye
movements to the devices between Rebo and the IR remote.
This result would be caused by participants who look at
the facial and LED expressions of Rebo. Although theexpressions were used to improve the familiarity, they would
excessively grab participants’ attention. If they got used toRebo, there would be no problem. As another view point, thisresult would be caused by the low number of TV functions.
Participants would be able to manipulate the IR remotewithout looking at it, because there were a few buttons thatwere easy to be pushed as shown in Fig. 8.

VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed a robot-like remote control,
Rebo, for controlling home electronic appliances and implemented an advanced TV system. Rebo has three advantages;
familiarity, function awareness, and stroke manipulation.
Robot-like appearance and facial expression makes it familiar
with users. We implemented four facial expressions as alife-like behavior and video picture animations as feedback
from the TV to enable users to easily notice its functions.
We also conducted experiments with participants to evaluate
Rebo’s advantages and the experimental results supported
the advantages. In the next state of our work, we conduct
investigation into the effectiveness of function awareness andthe possibility of context-sensitive remote control.
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