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Design and Fabrication of a Floating Social Robot: CeB the Social Blimp

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13086))

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Abstract

Robotic blimps have a wide range of applications, such as monitoring activities in their surroundings, advertising, and performing on stages. They also have remarkable capacities to be used as a social robot. In this research, a manually operated social robotic blimp has been developed intending to interact with children as a social agent and attract adults’ attention as an entertainer in indoor public environments. Since the appearance of a social robot has a significant impact on its acceptance, first, we acquired opinions of several participants on the shape of a desired floating robot. The results revealed that a simple spherical structure adequately draws people’s attention. After design and fabrication of the robot, a survey on its social behaviors was distributed among 82 people. The results indicated that the participants prefer a medium-sized robot, and they also feel almost safe when the robot works around them. Furthermore, the results showed that people genuinely appreciate the opportunity to have a mutual conversation with the designed social blimp. Moreover, the participants believed that the designed blimp could be an entertaining social flying robot with which it is easy to interact. The outcome of this survey will be beneficial in designing and developing a social blimp with a focus on interacting with children and entertaining people.

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Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the fund provided by China National Key Research and Development Projects (Grant No. 2020YFB1313604).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social and Cognitive Robotics Lab, Sharif University of Technology, 1458889694, Tehran, Iran

    Erfan Etesami, Ali F. Meghdari, Shuzhi Sam Ge & Alireza Taheri

  2. Institute for Future (IFF), Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Alireza Nemati

  3. Chancellor of Fereshtegaan International Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    Ali F. Meghdari

  4. Social Robotics Lab, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117576, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

Authors
  1. Erfan Etesami
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  2. Alireza Nemati
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  3. Ali F. Meghdari
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  4. Shuzhi Sam Ge
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  5. Alireza Taheri
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Alireza Nemati or Ali F. Meghdari .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering, National University of Singapore, Faculty of Engineering, Singapore, Singapore

    Haizhou Li

  2. The National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

  3. A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore, Singapore

    Yan Wu

  4. Center for Human Technologies, Istituto Italiano Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Agnieszka Wykowska

  5. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Hongsheng He

  6. Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

    Xiaorui Liu

  7. School of Cyber Science and Technology, Beihang University, Beijing, Beijing, China

    Dongyu Li

  8. Social Cognition Human-Robot Interaction, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Jairo Perez-Osorio

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Etesami, E., Nemati, A., Meghdari, A.F., Ge, S.S., Taheri, A. (2021). Design and Fabrication of a Floating Social Robot: CeB the Social Blimp. In: Li, H., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13086. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_58

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_58

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-90524-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-90525-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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