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Buddy: A Companion Robot for the Whole Family
Abstract and Figures
Buddy with its 60 centimeters and 4 degrees of freedom is a highly engaging social robot. Buddy deploys many assets for social interaction such as its appealing design, its anthropomorphic face able to display emotional reactions and its ability to be proactive to look for a user and propose activities.Buddy is developed by Blue Frog Robotics, a French start-up based in Paris, and aims to be the friendly companion for the whole family. With its intuitive SDK based on the famous UNITY game engine, Buddy is also designed to be a tool for research and education.
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... At 60 cm tall and weighing at 6 kg, the compact robot provides a wide range of services that make it a suitable family companion. Buddy can move around due to its navigation components and sensors which include Time of Flight, Ultrasound, 3D camera and ground sensors [7]. These components aid in obstacle detection and allow the robot to safely navigate around and support humans. ...
... The touchscreen and caress sensors enabled the robot to sense human touch and react appropriately. In addition, Buddy maintains its own internal state of emotions that is computed based on the stimuli linked to its past interactions and environment through Artificial Intelligence [7]. This internal state helps remember and improve further human interactions based on the human's feedback. ...
... This internal state helps remember and improve further human interactions based on the human's feedback. The robot comes with a software development kit (SDK) which gives users access to all its components like emotional behavioral display, GUI, and dialogue management [7]. ...
A companion robot is built to overcome student loneliness due to COVID-19. The robot is made for college and university students whose social lives have been adversely affected since the beginning of the pandemic. Prolonged loneliness if neglected can contribute to depression and rising stress levels. The aim of the robot is to provide social support to students as physically meeting friends and family has become more difficult. Related works reviewed are Pepper, Buddy and Paro robots which are the most popular companion robots today. The literature review studied the perception of college and university students towards robots as well as the most effective features in a social companion robot. It was noted that both verbal and non-verbal interactions were essential in engaging the attention of the students with appearance further boosting the likability of the robot. The robot is built with Lego EV3 and Raspberry Pi along with speech recognition and touch sensors, to make it an engaging companion. It is equipped with a range of functionalities like telling jokes and playing games to alleviate the student's loneliness. A user testing was conducted with 6 participants to evaluate whether the robot fulfills the objectives and addresses the problem statement. The findings indicate that the robot was well-received by students who gave it a positive rating to the robot, their experience, and the impact the interaction had on their mood. It was found that most of them believe that the robot could reduce loneliness if used over a longer period as was suggested by the findings of previous research. However, there were a few issues with the accuracy of the speech recognition that can potentially be improved to increase usability and responsiveness of the robot.
... Es aquí donde la robótica social, enfocada al desarrollo de robots para la interacción humano-robot siguiendo las convenciones sociales establecidas (Hegel et al. 2009), cobra importancia. Algunos ejemplos son el robot Stevie, un robot humanoide diseñado para la interacción con personas de avanzada edad (Taylor et al. 2021); Mabu, un robot diseñado para la asistencia de personas mayores (Moine 2018); Buddy un robot compañero emocional enfocado a educación, apoyo emocional o cuidado de ancianos (Milliez 2018); o Mini, un robot de sobremesa diseñado para interactuar con personas de avanzada edad y discapacidades cognitivas (Salichs et al. 2020). ...
La robótica social destaca, en parte, con robots de sobremesa, que permanecen en la ubicación donde se colocan. Esto limita su área de percepción a la zona donde sus sensores alcanzan. En aplicaciones donde se desea una monitorización del usuario esta puede ser una importante limitación. Para intentar paliarlo, en el presente trabajo se propone ampliar las capacidades de percepción del robot social Mini, diseñado y construido en el grupo Robotics Lab de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, integrando la información proporcionada por una red de sensores IoT. Se ha desarrollado un sistema de reglas que analiza los valores ambientales medidos por la red de sensores en tiempo real y detecta situaciones anómalas o de riesgo para el usuario. Cuando se identifica una, el robot avisa al usuario y le sugiere una acción para paliarlo, además pregunta al usuario si se encuentra bien. En caso de no recibir respuesta, avisa a un familiar empleando una aplicación de mensajería instantánea.
... With 12 degrees of freedom, Huggable [44] is a robotic Teddy bear designed for use in pediatric care facilities. Buddy [45] has five degrees of freedom and is used for various purposes, such as interacting with children in hospitals and helping with education. In general, social robots primarily prioritize social interaction rather than extensive movement abilities, focusing on performing simple social gestures. ...
One of the most important aspects in the design of a social robot is its visual appeal, with the design of its head playing a particularly important role in this regard. The head design for social robots has been developed using a variety of ways; one that has become popular today is the use of an in-head projector to create a 3D face for the robot. In this research, we review the design specifications and development stages of the Taban 1 and Taban 2 social robots, which were developed for communication with children in educational sessions. One notable feature of these robots is the presence of a projector located inside the back of the head, which displays the image of different characters on various 3D masks, enhancing the robot's appeal and preventing children from getting bored with the interaction. Due to the low attractiveness of the Taban 1, the Taban 2 robot was developed to increase its desirability. The study explores the conceptual and detailed design of the robots, including their hardware and software components. As children prefer a more cartoon-like horizontal face, this study also highlights the advantages of a horizontal face design, allowing for more cartoon-like characters. To evaluate the effectiveness of child–robot interaction and to study whether the Taban 2 robot is more attractive to children than the Taban 1 or not, acceptance sessions were conducted. The participants expressed high satisfaction and positive reception towards Taban 2, considering it a likable, intelligent, and safe technological teaching aid.
... Then, we introduced generative AI to participants and encouraged participants to pose questions to ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI. We introduced other technologies through videos, including the Amazon Echo Dot voice assistant [85], the Buddy companion robot [63], and the interactive table Tovertafel [37]. ...
Recent innovations in digital technology offer significant opportunities for older adults to engage in meaningful activities. To investigate older adults' perceptions of using existing and emerging technologies for meaningful activities, we conducted three participatory design workshops and follow-up interviews with adults aged over 65. The workshops encompassed discussions on existing technologies for meaningful activities, demonstrations of emerging technologies such as VR, AR, and AI, and design activities including prototyping and storyboarding. Our findings show that while participants had diverse interpretations of meaningful activities, they sought to use technologies to support continuity in the pursuit of these activities. Specifically, participants highlighted the importance of safe aging at home, which provides a pathway for meaningful activities in later life. We further discuss participants' discerning attitudes when assessing the use of different technologies for meaningful activities and several values and attributes they desire when envisioning future technologies, including simplicity, positivity, proactivity, and integration.
... Several robots have been proposed exclusively for children with ASD, such as KASPAR [31], Leka [32], QTrobot [11], Milo [33], Buddy [34], Castor [35], and Moxie [10]. Most of them are humanoid in appearance, while Leka is a multisensory spherical robot that emits subtle vibrations, lights up with colorful LEDs, plays music, and chirps in an anthropomorphic fashion. ...
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits in social interaction and expressing and understanding emotions. Based on this, robots for children with ASD have been proposed. However, few studies have been conducted about how to design a social robot for children with ASD. Non-experimental studies have been carried out to evaluate social robots; however, the general methodology that should be used to design a social robot is not clear. This study proposes a design path for a social robot for emotional communication for children with ASD following a user-centered design approach. This design path was applied to a case study and evaluated by a group of experts in psychology, human–robot interaction, and human–computer interaction from Chile and Colombia, as well as parents of children with ASD. Our results show that following the proposed design path for a social robot to communicate emotions for children with ASD is favorable.
... There are several robots proposed only for children with ASD such as KASPAR [28], Leka [30], QTrobot [31], Buddy [32], Castor [33], and Moxie [34]. Many of them humanoid in appearance, but Leka is a multisensory spherical robot which emits subtle vibrations and lights up with colorful LEDs, plays music and chirps in anthropomorphic fashion. ...
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder have deficits in social interaction and expressing and understanding emotions. Many robots for children with ASD have been proposed. However, few studies were found about how to design a social robot for children with ASD. Studies reviewed employed non-experimental studies to evaluate a social robot, but the methodology to design a social robot is rare. This study proposes a design path for a social robot for emotional communi-cation for children with ASD, following User-Centered Design approach. This design path is ap-plied with a study case, evaluated with an expert group on psychologist, human-robot interaction, human-computer interaction, and parents of children with ASD. Results show than following the design path proposed to design a social robot to communication emotions for children ASD is favorable.
Recent advances in robotics technology and artificial intelligence (AI) have sparked increased interest in humanoid robots that resemble humans and social robots capable of interacting socially. Alongside this trend, a new field of robot research called human-robot interaction (HRI) is gaining prominence. The aim of this review paper is to introduce the fundamental concepts of HRI and social robots, examine their current applications in the medical field, and discuss the current and future prospects of HRI and social robots in spinal care. HRI is an interdisciplinary field where robotics, AI, social sciences, design, and various disciplines collaborate organically to develop robots that successfully interact with humans as the ultimate goal. While social robots are not yet widely deployed in clinical environments, ongoing HRI research encompasses various areas such as nursing and caregiving support, social and emotional assistance, rehabilitation and cognitive enhancement for the elderly, medical information provision and education, as well as patient monitoring and data collection. Although still in its early stages, research related to spinal care includes studies on robotic support for rehabilitation exercises, assistance in gait training, and questionnaire-based assessments for spinal pain. Future applications of social robots in spinal care will require diverse HRI research efforts and active involvement from spinal specialists.
During the last 15 years, an increasing amount of works have investigated proactive robotic behavior in relation to Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). The works engage with a variety of research topics and technical challenges. In this paper a review of the related literature identified through a structured block search is performed. Variations in the corpus are investigated, and a definition of Proactive HRI is provided. Furthermore, a taxonomy is proposed based on the corpus and exemplified through specific works. Finally, a selection of noteworthy observations is discussed.
Purpose:
Assistive technology for elderly are advancing, and this study aimed to analyse the Indian perspective on utilising assistive robot technology for aiding elderly individuals.
Materials and methods:
A population-based survey was undertaken to collect data from three perspectives: Relatives of the elderly, Healthcare professionals and Elderly individuals. The survey gathered 389 responses. The responses are statistically analysed, and data is visualised with different plots for better understanding.
Results:
It is observed that the older people rate with less conviction on the use of technology when compared to the relatives and healthcare professionals. Out of the three target groups, the elderly individuals had the most correlating attributes to purchasing the robot. Also, healthcare personnel, relatives, and older people gave 82%, 63% and 55% affirmatives to the question on purchasing the robot, respectively. And the cost of the robot is preferred to be under 6 lakh rupees.
Conclusions:
Though the younger generation has more orientation towards technology, older people are skeptical about handling computer gadgets or robots. However, there are significant expectations and concerns expressed by three target groups such as conversational, navigational, reminder features, security and malfunction concerns.
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