Sensecomputing for Human-Machine Collaboration through Human Emotion Understanding

The Japanese working-age population is estimated to Fall to about half of the total population by 2060. Along with this change in society, new working lifestyles such as working remotely and co-working with robots are becoming popular. Coming together with others within the workplace in the real world can create advantages for organizing our work life, but current computer technologies-including robots and other autonomous artificial intelligent systems-have not helped to create the same advantages in remote working spaces yet. Sensecomputing Research Center in Fujitsu Laboratories takes on this research issue regarding people's need For relatedness. We aim to develop computer-supported cooperative remote working spaces that satisfy people's basic psychological need for relatedness. In this paper, we introduce a preliminary study on building design for future remote working spaces. This paper presents findings obtained on how a user interacts with other persons using his/her interpersonal relationship building behaviors in virtual reality settings. It then shows that future remote working spaces will let a user be informed that another person would like to approach or avoid him/her, using where the other person's body parts are positioned, how angled the other person's upper body is, etc. This paper also includes the background for the study and the preliminary results of user observations, including its methodology and system configurations.