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On the design of the huggable robot Probo This publication appears in: Journal of Physical Agents Authors: J. Saldien, K. Goris, S. Yilmazyildiz, W. Verhelst and D. Lefeber Volume: 2 Issue: Special Issue on Human Interaction with Domestic R Pages: 3-12 Publication Date: May. 2008
Abstract: Nowadays robots are being created that interact
with human beings in order to satisfy certain social needs. Following
this trend, the development of the social robot Probo has
started. The robot will be used in hospitals, as a tele-interface for
entertainment, communication and medical assistance. Therefore,
it requires the ability to express emotions. In order to do so, an
emotional interface is developed to fully configure the display of
emotions. These emotions -represented as a vector in an emotion
space- are mapped to the degrees of freedom used in the robot.
Besides emotions, the interface includes a control for the point
of attention and a module to create and store animations. A 3D
virtual model is created, acting as a virtual replica of the robot,
providing realistic visual feedback to evaluate the design choices
for the facial expressions. This paper presents the objectives of
this new robot and describe the concepts and design of the first
prototype. External Link.
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