We participated in Interaction 2025 held at Hitotsubashi Auditorium for three days as a demonstration presentation. Our presentation, “Investigation of the sense of life through the experience of feeding a bird-like robot,” was given on the first day of the event, and we had a very fruitful discussion with the participants.
We had a wide range of discussions with the participants and had a very fruitful time.
Two of the most frequently asked questions from the participants were whether the stuffed animals were handmade or not, and whether the robot could walk.

When I told them that I had already used a stuffed animal for the former question, they replied that they had never heard of a company that sold realistic, full-scale stuffed animals of a penguin.
Many of them were surprised that there are companies that sell realistic stuffed animals of real size. We also talked about how difficult it is to make something from scratch when conducting research and experiments.

“Favorite Research Auditing Penguin”
by Kaito Nakamura

Koudai Nieda won the Student Outstanding Interactive Presentation Award!

Awarding Organization/Academic Society: Human Communication Group, The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (HCG Symposium 2023)

Outline, purpose, and date of the conference/event
The HCG Symposium is an academic conference attended by researchers in fields closely related to human communication such as psychology, cognitive science, social science, physiology, and design studies, in addition to the engineering field.

Name of Award: Student Interactive Presentation Award

Date of Award: 12/13/2023

Awardees :
Kota Nieda, Taishi Sawabe, Masayuki Kanbara, Yuichiro Fujimoto, and Hirokazu Kato

Research theme
“Evaluation of the Reduction Effect of Pain Perception by “Talking and Stroking” Motion of a Robot”.

When caring for a patient, people perform a “talking and stroking” action that gives pleasant feelings to the patient. In recent years, advances in artificial intelligence and robotics technology have made it possible for people to interact with robots.
It has become clear that “talking and stroking” gives people more pleasant feelings than “talking” alone or “stroking” alone. The purpose of this study is to verify whether the “talking and stroking” behavior by the robot alters the perception of physical pain as well as psychological effects. The results of an evaluation experiment with 37 subjects showed that both “stroking” and “talking while stroking” were effective in reducing the perception of pain, and that “talking while stroking” had a greater psychological impact than “stroking. The results of the evaluation experiment with 37 subjects were both supportive of the results.

Comments on the Award
I am truly honored to receive this award. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the professors and students in my laboratory for their guidance, discussion, and cooperation. We will continue to make further efforts to reduce pain through robotics.

Hi everyone,
Nice to meet you, I’m M2 Soshiiro Ueda.

SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 was held in Sydney, Australia.

December in Australia was in the middle of summer, with temperatures exceeding 38 degrees Celsius on some days!

SIGGRAPH Asia is a conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive technologies, in which we participated as exhibitors.

We demonstrated for 3 days the “AR (Argument Reality) task support system” that we are currently researching.

Since researchers from from various fields attended at the exhibition, we were able to ask for feedback on the our demo and discuss the research we were doing.

We were able to get advice from various perspectives, which was very helpful and exciting.

I was very tired because I was on my feet for almost all of the three days, but it was a wonderful experience.

Next year’s SIGGRAPH Asia will be held in Tokyo. I am very much looking forward to it!

Hej, Hur mår du?

Jag heter Sawabe.

HAI (Human-Agent Interaction) 2023 was held in Gothenburg, Sweden.

IMD gave one oral presentation and two poster presentations.

It was cold and snowy in Sweden in December, but we had a lot of fun in discussions with various researchers at the venue.

The discussions with various researchers at the venue were very exciting.

I met Manuel (poster presenter), who used to come to IMD as an internship from Germany, after a long time,
(He came from Germany by plane to Sweden, but his flight was suddenly canceled due to heavy snow in Munich the day before.)

We talked about each other’s recent situation and our next research projects, etc. It was a very productive conference.

Since researchers from various countries were present at the local presentations, we were able to discuss the research we were doing

(especially when we expressed the nuances of Japanese in English).

We were also able to get advice from various perspectives, which was very helpful.

It was great to get advice from various perspectives.
(I am currently writing a paper at the airport in transit on my way home based on my findings here: ☺️😪)

Above: Gothenburg (Sweden) in the snow, it was so cold to the venue that I almost lost my ears (hat must).

Good luck for the next one!

Prof. Kato received ISMAR 2023 Career Impact Award.

Congratulations, Prof.

・授賞団体/学会：The 22nd IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2023)

・学会・イベントの概要、主旨、開催日
IEEE ISMARは、拡張現実感（AR）、複合現実感（MR）、仮想現実感（VR）に関する最高峰の会議であり、学術界と産業界の両方から世界有数の研究者が集まります。
IEEE ISMAR is the premier conference for Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Virtual Reality (VR), which attracts the world’s leading researchers from both academia and industry.

・受賞名： ISMAR 2023 Career Impact Award

・受賞日：2023/10/18

・受賞者 加藤博一 Hirokazu Karo

・受賞の概要
この度、加藤教授の長年にわたる研究が当該分野へ多大な影響を与えたことが評価され、Career Impact Awardが贈られました。
In recognition for the significant impact his lifelong research has had to the field of Augmented Reality

・受賞コメント　等
拡張現実感に関する研究に９８年から２５年間取り組んできましたが、このような形で評価いただき、光栄に思います。
短かったようにも感じますが、当時は実験システムの構築だけで一苦労だったのが、
今では誰もが持っているスマートフォンにその技術が搭載されており、技術の進化を実感できます。
拡張現実感技術の発展に少しは貢献できたことを嬉しく思います。
“I am very honored to receive this award.
I have been working on research on augmented reality for 25 years since 1998.
When I started this research, even building the experimental system was challenging.
However, this technology is now installed in the smartphones that everyone owns, and I can truly see the evolution of technology.
I’m glad that I was able to make a small contribution to the development of augmented reality technology.”

Hi this is Prof. Sawabe.

I attended HCII2023 and gave a presentation.

This was my first time attending HCII and my first time in Copenhagen, Denmark (the venue).

I arrived in Denmark after a 19-hour flight via Doha (transit).

What is this conference about?:

HCI INTERNATIONAL 2023 25TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION AC Bella Sky Hotel and Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

The parallel sessions were held from morning (around 8:00) to evening (around 18:00).
Of course, you can freely attend any session you like, so you can pick up only the presentations you are interested in.

Through the lectures I attended and the ones I presented, I found that various efforts are being made around the world on the topic of ICT for the elderly, and some of the services are actually being used by elderly users.

The content of my presentation was about the operation of a service that uses smartphone agents to listen to how people use their smartphones and their smartphone problems, but there are not many approaches using agents (characters) yet. (I felt that most research assumes that elderly users already have smartphones and use them normally. I think there is a big challenge here!)

Denmark itself is a very laid-back country, and the temperature outside was cool (about 20 degrees Celsius on average, while it was about 35 degrees Celsius in Japan at that time…). It was also cool (or cold) inside the hotel, so we had to buy clothes locally. The tax rate was so high that even a set of Mac🙆D cost about 2,000 yen (!!!!). The LEGO store was very crowded, as you would expect from the birthplace of LEGO.

Hi everyone,

IMD lab, D3 student, Sid here!

Last October 17-21, I was given the opportunity to attend in person ISMAR2022 in Singapore.

I presented my work entitled “Application of Participatory Design Methodology in AR: Developing Prototypes for Two Context Scenarios” as a workshop paper in Design and User Research in AR/VR/MR.

I really learned a lot attending the conference and listening to the different research presented, and I was especially inspired by the Keynote speech of Henry Fuchs where he shared his story on what the purpose of AR is. It is indeed endearing that one of the brightest man could have such pure wishes, as his dream is for AR to be the bridge of interaction between him and his beloved ones at times when they are physically apart (as video calls is simply not enough).

Although the schedule between each sessions were very hectic, I was able to keep my focus with the help of unlimited coffee, snacks, and meals they have provided. It was also a golden opportunity for me to connect and interact with different kinds of people in my field of study.

Hello, this is Tatsuki Asada, M1.

I attended the IEICE Media Experience and Virtual Environment (MVE) Workshop held on 3/9~3/11 in Okinawa, Japan.

“Tsundere Interaction: Investigating the Relationship between the Receiver’s Dominant and Submissive Personalities and Work Motivation”

I did presentation of the theme.

MVE, Image and Media Quality (IMQ), Communication Quality (CQ), and Image Engineering (IE) also co-sponsored the conference. The MVE workshop was a hybrid of on-site and online sessions.

Although the actual participation was Zoom-based and there was not much on-site interaction, we had constructive discussions with the moderator and participants during the Q&A session and received many positive comments such as “I have high expectations for this research,” which motivated us for the future.

After the conference, I did a little sightseeing in Okinawa. There are many U.S. military bases in the area, and it is said to be famous for American food, so I had a steak.

Participating in the conference this time allowed me to gain opinions from new perspectives that I could not have obtained only on campus, and to learn where I stand in my own research.

I would definitely like to participate again if I have the chance.