When humans listen to pleasant music and see beautiful scenery, they have some feelings. For example, there are various feelings such as “great!” or “nice!”. Usually, these are evoked naturally by the intuitive reaction of human brain functions with stimulation from the outside world such as music and scenery. In our laboratory, we research in various fields with the aim of enriching people's lives by analyzing and using the feelings of human beings occurred by stimuli of something, so-called Kansei (in Japanese).

However, it is very difficult to deal with human sensitivity. Because it is difficult to express Kansei by numerical information. For example, the measurement result that “The length of this pen is 15 cm" can be understood without misunderstanding in the world, but even if I told you that "I like this character is 8 points out of 10 points“, you may not know clearly my feelings.

This is because, in the first place, it is different for each person how much "likes" the degree of preference is 10 points. How to feel about things is different for each person and there is no unified scale. For this reason, Kansei is objectively difficult to handle as numerical information. And, "Why do you like it" is also hard to understand. Anything that likely to become grounds such as "Because it's pretty? Because it's cool?" will come out as many as you like.

However, research on dealing with human sensitivity as described above are being conducted around the world, and the needs are getting higher these days. Let's see why research related to Kansei is important!

Why research Kansei?

Nowadays, things are overflowing in various markets such as clothing, home appliances, interior and so on, and it is an era that can’t be sold unless good products are made. Even if it says a good product, it is various such as "design is good" or "performance is wonderful", but the good product here is "good for consumers who buy goods", that is, it is a product that the consumers wants.

In order to make a good product, it is necessary to know what kind of product and its feature the consumer wants, and what features are necessary the consumer wants, etc. Consumers choose good products for themselves freely, but for companies that make products, it is very interested in how consumers feel about their products, such as "Why our product can be sold" and "What kind of design do young people like these days".

Here, research on Kansei information processing, which we are working on by researchers around the world including us, is useful.

Our laboratory is doing this research!

Please see the figure below. This is a summary of research on Kansei information processing. We research not only analyzing human sensitivity information by a questionnaire or the like but also development of a robot capable of understanding human sensitivity, making products that can be sold using human sensitivity information, searching various products according to human sensitivity information and making various products according to human sensitivity information.

We introduce our research contents so far in this website, so please take a look. Our research is still midway, but as we have mentioned, we think that research on Kansei information processing will progress further in the future.

Why don’t you join us in researching Kansei information processing?
We are waiting for visits etc. of those who are interested!