Investigating the impact of free energy based behavior on human in human-agent interaction

Humans communicate non-verbally by sharing physical rhythms, such as nodding and gestures, to involve each other. This sharing of physicality creates a sense of unity and makes humans feel involved with others. In this paper, we developed a new body motion generation system based on the free-energy principle (FEP), which not only responds passively but also prompts human actions. The proposed system consists of two modules, the sampling module, and the motion selection module. We conducted a subjective experiment to evaluate the "feeling of interacting with the agent" of the FEP based behavior. The results suggested that FEP based behaviors show more "feeling of interacting with the agent". Furthermore, we confirmed that the agent's gestures elicited subject gestures. This result not only reinforces the impression of feeling interaction but could also realization of agents that encourage people to change their behavior.