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Studying Design Aspects for Social Robots Using a Generic Gesture Method

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Abstract

Since social robots are aimed to interact and communicate with humans in a natural way and operate in our daily environment, their design should be adapted to this. Although many social robots are for that reason more or less based on the human model, the exact morphology of the robot depends on their specific application. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology to study the influence of different design aspects, based on a generic gesture method. The gesture method was developed to overcome the difficulties in transferring gestures to different robots, providing a solution for the correspondence problem. A small set of morphological information, inputted by the user, is used to evaluate the generic framework of the software at runtime. Therefore, gestures can be calculated fast and easy for a desired robot configuration. By generating a set of gestures for different morphologies, the importance of specific joints and their influence on a series of postures and gestures can be studied. The gesture method proves its usefulness in the design process of social robots by providing an impression of the necessary amount of complexity needed for a specified task, and can give interesting insights in the required joint angle range. In this paper, this design methodology is illustrated by using the virtual model of the robot Probo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Robotics and Multibody Mechanics Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Greet Van de Perre, Albert De Beir, Hoang-Long Cao, Pablo Gómez Esteban, Dirk Lefeber & Bram Vanderborght

  2. Flexible Assembly Flanders Make, Louvain, Belgium

    Greet Van de Perre, Albert De Beir, Hoang-Long Cao, Pablo Gómez Esteban, Dirk Lefeber & Bram Vanderborght

Authors
  1. Greet Van de Perre
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  2. Albert De Beir
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  3. Hoang-Long Cao
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  4. Pablo Gómez Esteban
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  5. Dirk Lefeber
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  6. Bram Vanderborght
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Correspondence to Greet Van de Perre.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Funding

Greet Van de Perre is funded by the Fund for Scientific Research (FWO), Flanders [Grant No. 11F2315N]. This work is partially funded by the European Commission 7th Framework Program as a part of the project DREAM [Grant No. 611391].

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The first author is funded by the Fund for Scientific Research (FWO) Flanders. This work is partially funded by the EU-project DREAM [Grant Number 611391].

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Van de Perre, G., De Beir, A., Cao, HL. et al. Studying Design Aspects for Social Robots Using a Generic Gesture Method. Int J of Soc Robotics 11, 651–663 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00518-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00518-x

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