How Do People Respond to Being Touched by a Robot?
How might people react if they were touched by a robot? Would they recoil, or would they take it in stride? In an initial study, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology found people generally had a positive response toward being touched by a robotic nurse, but that their perception of the robot’s intent made a significant difference. Charlie Kemp, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, and Tiffany Chen, doctoral student at Tech, talk about their investigation that looks at how being attended by a robot can affect people’s comfort level. The research took place in Kemp’s Healthcare Robotics Lab with the robot known as Cody. Cody is now sporting new Xbox 360 Kinect headgear, gear that he didn’t have in the initial study. For the written story see digitallounge.gatech.edu Video: Rob Felt, David Terraso/Georgia Tech Photos: Rob Felt/Georgia Tech
Read MoreRI-MAN : Robot to lift and carry people – ROBORAMA.info
For more life-like robot video clips, information and photo, please visit ROBORAMA.info – RI-MAN is the world’s first robot designed for lifting and carrying humans. A variety of sensors, including flexible tactile sensor sheets, provide RI-MAN with a sense of vision, hearing, touch, and smell. These senses help RI-MAN perform tasks such as locating people who are calling out to it, responding to spoken commands, carefully lifting those who need lifting, and checking the sanitary condition of the person it is carrying. RI-MAN is able to integrate a wide range of sensory data to adapt to changes in the environment. The robot is also equipped with 19 motors, controlled by a system of hierarchical distributed processing that is modeled after the nervous system found in biological organisms. This “nervous system” — a network of what RIKEN calls C-CHIPs — integrates sensor data processing with motor control to provide RI-MAN the autonomy needed to respond quickly to changes in the environment. The head has 3 degrees of freedom, each arm has 6, the waist has 2, and the base (which acts as RI-MAN’s legs) has 2. Safety-related technology, including safety circuits and soft skin and joints designed to prevent injury, are incorporated into RI-MAN’s design. Still in the initial testing phase, RI-MAN is currently practicing with dolls that weigh about 12 kg (26 lbs). Researchers plan to increase the weight of the practice dolls over time, with the aim of achieving the ability to lift …
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