Artificial companions as personal coach for children

Abstract

The MOCA Project that aims at designing and studying the interaction and relationship between artificial companions and children in everyday life at home activities. Artificial companions are digital embodied entities that can be either robotic or virtual. In this paper, we focus on a single activity, subpart of the whole project: a coaching application that uses two artificial companions to teach the basics of drums to children. One device is a Nao robot, the other is a virtual agent. This application offers a wide variety of interaction situation that will enable us to conduct several experiments. Future directions are discussed, in terms of user-computer interaction and in terms of coaching and e-learning applications.

Animation Techniques in Human-Robot Interaction User Studies

“…Twelve studies used a humanoid robot or a combination of a humanoid robot with an animal robot. Eight of the aforementioned studies used Nao [12,55,60,52,58,1,41,84] one of the eight also used a Pepper robot [41]. These commercially-available robots offer software to animate the robot using animation techniques and using key frames [65].…”

“…Other forms included domestic robots like the Roomba [99], a quadcopter drone [77], a PR2 [82] or a custom, three-armed, marimba-playing robot [37]. [95] Robovie II P Motion Capture 2007 [5] iCat, Robovie II A, P Secondary Action 2010 [24] RAF H Secondary Action 2010 [32] Stem O Unspecified animation techniques 2011 [37] Shinmon O Anticipation, Follow Through, Slow In, Slow Out 2011 [82] PR2 O Anticipation, Follow Through 2011 [93] Tofu A Squash and Stretch 2011 [97] Haptic Creature A Pose to Pose (Key Frame) 2012 [12] Nao P Motion Capture, Pose to Pose (Key Frame) 2012 [31] SIMON P Exaggeration 2012 [72] Alphabot O Pose to Pose (Key Frame) 2013 [23] DEVA O Squash and Stretch 2013 [77] Parrot AR.Drone O Motion Capture 2014 [99] Roomba, Reactor O, A Motion Capture, Puppetry 2015 [35] Custom Head H Unspecified animation techniques 2015 [55] Nao P Pose to Pose (Key Frame) 2015 [60] Nao P Secondary Action 2015 [62] Custom Head H Exaggeration, Secondary Action 2015 [96] Probo A Secondary Action, Squash and Stretch 2016 [52] Nao P Motion capture 2016 [58] Nao, iCat P, A Secondary Action, Pose to Pose (Key Frame) 2017 [1] Nao P Secondary Action 2017 [53] ISR-RobotHead H Secondary Action 2017 [67] Adelino A Inverse Kinematics using animation principles 2017 [41] Pepper, Nao P Pose to Pose (Key Frame) 2017 [84] Nao P Puppetry, "Animation Best Practices"…”

“…This principle is similar to the idea of key frames since-in applying the pose to pose part of the principle-the animator is trying to create the key poses (i.e., frames) for the character in a situation. All the studies either explicitly name the method [72,55,97] or use software that Table 4. Breakdown of animation principle and the number of studies they are used in, ordered by number of articles; some articles use more than one principle.…”

“…Secondary uses key poses for driving the animation [58,12,41]. Studies that employ the principle examine synchronizing action to another event (e.g., entering or leaving the virtual world [72], dancing [55], or falling [58]), present the robot's emotional state [97,12], or the impression a participant receives about the robot [41]. Although most individuals do not consider robots soft and squishy, the Squash and Stretch principle was used in three studies.…”

“…Most of the studies (24) took place in a lab [37] had a study in a lab and real-world setting for the robot). Two of the studies in the real world environment [13,55] did not have a count on the participants or were only a pilot. This was the case for only one lab study.…”