Mimicry makes computers the user's friend"...The animated character scored highest .. when its voice was mimicking about 80 per cent of the user's voice. "
09:00 02 June 03 New Scientist
... Noriko Suzuki's team at the ATR Media Information Science Laboratories in Kyoto thought. They got the idea from research on how social bonds develop between people....To see if computers could establish such a rapport with their users...Suzuki thinks that embedding such mimicry into speech during vocal interactions between computers or robots and humans will make things better. "Sometimes people are afraid of robots," says Suzuki. But if robot voice patterns are improved, people may warm to them, he adds.
