A Portable Mediate Interface 'Handybot' for the Rich Human-Robot Interaction

Abstract

The importance of the interaction capability of a robot increases as the application of a robot is extended to a human's daily life. In this paper, a portable mediate interface Handybot is developed with various interaction channels to be used with an intelligent home service robot. The Handybot has a task-oriented channel of an icon language as well as a verbal interface. It also has an emotional interaction channel that recognizes a user's emotional state from facial expression and speech, transmits that state to the robot, and expresses the robot's emotional state to the user. It is expected that the Handybot will reduce spatial problems that may exist in human-robot interactions, propose a new interaction method, and help creating rich and continuous interactions between human users and robots.