Design and Usage Support System of Robot Partners based on a User-centric Modular Structure

Recently, various robot systems have been developing. And the social necessity of the robot system is gradually emphasized, especially in the service industry have an intention to use the robot system. However, the usage of robots is rarely expanded in the social place. One of the main reasons is the needs of users who actually use the robots are not determined, and it is not easy to design and use robots to meet the needs of users. Therefore, to consider this problem, we propose the concept that users can conveniently consider the robot hardware design. In this research, we focused on the design selection and fabrication based on modular structured robot partner system. The proposed method is composed of three parts. First, we introduce the development of robot partners in accordance with design thinking. Next, we propose a modular robot partner system in order to meet users' needs. Finally, we show experimental results of the effectiveness of the robot partner system and discuss the applicability of the proposed system.

I. Introduction

Recently, robot systems with various purposes have developed such as education, public relations, and personal support. For examples, the robot "Pepper" manufactured by SoftBank Robotics (formerly Aldebaran Robotics) is sold at high performance and low price [1]. The robot "RoBoHoN" that built-in smart device function is also on sale [2]. This robot is usually used for interaction with users. In our previous works, we also have been conducting research for a long time to develop socially embedded robot partners [3].