Partial subtle mirroring of nonverbal behaviors during conversations (also known as mimicking or parallel empathy), is essential for rapport building, which in turn is essential for optimal human-human communication outcomes. Mirroring has been studied in interactions between robots and humans, and in interactions between Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) and humans. However, very few studies examine interactions between humans and ECAs that are integrated with robots, and none of them examine the effect of mirroring nonverbal behaviors in such interactions. Our research question is whether integrating an ECA able to mirror its interlocutor's facial expressions and head movements (continuously or intermittently) with a human-service robot will improve the user's experience with the support robot that is able to perform useful mobile manipulative tasks (e.g. at home). Our contribution is the complex integration of an expressive ECA, able to track its interlocutor's face, and to mirror his/her facial expressions and head movements in real time, integrated with a human support robot such that the robot and the agent are fully aware of each others', and of the users', nonverbals cues. We also describe a pilot study we conducted towards answering our research question, which shows promising results for our forthcoming larger user study.

Last week, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games organizing committee announced the launch of the "Tokyo 2020 Robot Project." The project will involve the deployment of an assortment of robots to do useful things for visitors at the games, but so far, we've just seen specific details about two: Toyota's Human Support Robot (HSR) and Delivery Support Robot (DSR). These robots are supposed to be part of a "practical real-life deployment helping people," and the idea is that HSR and DSR will work together to assist disabled visitors, showing them to their seats and fetching food or other items that can be ordered with a tablet. The Toyota HSR is a mobile manipulator, able to move around and pick stuff up. It can do all kinds of things, provided that you can program it to do all of those things, which is not easy, especially if it's supposed to operate autonomously in an Olympic venue rather than a robotics lab.

These are some of the skills new robots presented at the World Robot Summit in Tokyo can perform. From enormous'construction workers' to helpful personal shoppers, here are some of the latest breakthroughs in robotics. CarriRo, shaped like a toy London bus with friendly'eyes' on its front, delivers packages by rolling around streets at four miles per hour. It directs itself via GPS to addresses within a one-mile radius, explained Chio Ishikawa from Sumitomo Corp which is promoting the robot. The person receiving the package is sent a code to their smartphone which allows them to open up CarriRo and retrieve whatever it is delivering them.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Dean Kamen's DEKA R&D firm, with support from DARPA's Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program, designed the advanced prosthetic LUKE Arm to give amputees "dexterous arm and hand movement through a simple, intuitive control system." The LUKE Arm, which stands for Life Under Kinetic Evolution but is also a reference to Luke Skywalker's bionic hand, "allows users to control multiple joints simultaneously and provides a variety of grips and grip forces by means of wireless signals generated by sensors worn on the feet or via other easy-to-use controllers."