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Design concept Components |
Design Concept How will the robot interact with people Robots will interact with human beings in a highly social and emotional way. When you are talking about robots in human society, you're not talking about computer specialists or engineers, you're talking about the layperson, Grandma, children and people who know nothing about robotics, but will be interacting with robots. This presents a whole set of challenges. The human environment is a profoundly social environment and these robots are going to have to be able to do things not just independently of people but work with people, communicate with people, really be an integrated part of people's lives. The idea is to try to design robots that supported what we as humans are already really good at rather than forcing people to learn a bizarre interface or a new way of communicating with the robot. The benefits of social interactions between people and robots.There is an entirely different range of applications these kinds of robots could serve. previously it was sweeping minefields, cleaning floors and going to explore the ocean, now it's about doing things with people, helping people. For older adults, the ability to live independently rather than move to an assisted living center will be a huge motivating factor that makes them early adopters of social robots in the home. In Japan one of the biggest applications or motivations for wanting to develop interactive, intelligent robots is that they're concerned about their growing elderly population and the fact that soon they're not going to have enough young people to really tend to all the elder people. So they see robots fulfilling a need for elderly companionship and assistance to help the elderly live independently longer. The elderly are often reticent about picking up a new technology, so it can't be something too confusing or esoteric. It has to be something that they see as genuinely helpful, but in the big picture people should actually really enjoy having these robots around as well. In many ways its like a blind person's relationship with a seeing eye dog. The seeing eye dog performs a very critical function for that person, a very useful function, but on the other hand, people adore having their dog. So we must use this social form of interaction to really address the needs of a person, not just about helping them with their cognitive and physical abilities. People are social creatures and they take pleasure in interacting with things in this way. Components Vision Motion detection, color differentiation, motion and color tracking, face recognition Hearing Left and right ear differentiation, sound pattern recognition Touch Force resistors provide a sense of touch Muscles Neck and shoulder movement, variable muscle speed and destination timing Voice Text-to-speech in several languages |