Development of a Teleoperated Play Tag Robot with Semi-Automatic Play

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a teleoperated robot that plays tag with a human player. Physical plays such as play tag are important for children’s development; however, some children cannot participate in such physical play for physical and mental reasons. The teleoperation of the physical play robot can be a tool to provide such children with a playing experience. To develop such a robot, we need to consider how to operate the robot, considering the ease of operation and safety for both other players and the robot. To achieve both an easy operation and safety, we propose a semi-automatic operation of the robot. In this operation strategy, the operator controls the robot so that the target player comes in front of the robot. Then the robot transits to the autonomous mode, where the robot automatically tracks the target and touches the target player. We conducted the validation experiment, confirming that the semi-automatic control was more straightforward and safer than the full-manual operation.