Designing a Co-Eating system based on Augmented Reality and Generative AI

In recent years, the number of single eaters, especially young people, has increased in Japan, and the importance of eating together has been highlighted.In response to this problem, systems have been developed in which people eat together with an agent that can perform eating actions and converse with them.However, conventional agents have a two-dimensional display with fixed speech content and lack human-like qualities.In this study, we developed a Co-Eating application that uses AR to project the agent in real space and enables free conversation with a generative AI.Experimental results confirmed that this system, like conventional ones, provides satisfaction of social needs and eating satisfaction, and is also highly effective in alleviating loneliness.