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[abstFig src='/00280006/10.jpg' width='300' text='Tabletop component-based Manzai robots' ] This manuscript describes a scalable tabletop Manzai robot system that has been developed using distributed software components. Manzai is a style of traditional Japanese stand-up comedy that is typically performed by two comedians – a stooge and a straight man. Manzai script refers to the dialogues exchanged between the two comedians. Manzai robots automatically generate their Manzai scripts from web news articles based on keywords provided by audiences and search results on the Internet. Then, the robots perform according to these Manzai scripts. This study focuses on the flexibility and scalability of a robot system based on distributed Robot Technology (RT) components. The results of the implementation experiments demonstrate the flexibility of the Manzai performing robots and the scalability of the functions of the robot system.

Purpose This paper aims to propose a system that generates dialogue scenarios automatically in real time from Web news articles. Then, the authors used the Manzai metaphor, a form of Japanese traditional humorous comedy, in the system. The generated Manzai scenario consists of snappy patter and a humorous misunderstanding of dialogue based on the gap of our structure of funny points. The authors create communication robots to amuse people with the generated humorous robot dialogue scenarios. Design/methodology/approach The authors propose the following: how to generate funny dialogue-based scenario from Web news and Web intelligence, automatically? How to create direction of robots based on the pre-experiment? The authors conducted experiments from three viewpoints, namely, effectiveness of Manzai scenarios as content, effectiveness of Manzai-Robots as a medium and familiarity of Manzai-Robots. Findings In this paper, the authors find two points, namely, the new communication style called “human–robots implicit communication-and bridging the knowledge gap using Web intelligence, to communicate smoothly between humans and robots. Originality/value Numerous studies have examined communication robots that mutually communicate with people. However, for several reasons, communicating smoothly with people is difficult for robots. One reason is the problem of communication style. Another is knowledge gaps separating humans and robots. The authors propose a new communication style to solve the problems and designate the communication style based on dialogue between robots as “human-robot implicit communication”. The authors then create communication robots to communicate with people naturally, smoothly and with familiarity according to their dialogue.

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