Enhancing Familiarity for Pepper Robots by Adopting Kinect-Driven Animations

• Main Authors: Hsieh,Wei-Fen, 謝薇棻
• Other Authors: Chen,Lieu-Hen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/98732906832895955000

碩士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 資訊工程學系 === 104 === Due to the aging population problem and the tendency to have fewer children, Taiwan’s society structure has been changed dramatically. This problem causes the elder usually stay alone in the house and have to take care of themselves. With the development of technology, we now have some methods to deal with this problem; for example, there are lots of wearable sensor and home surveillance devices available for different applications. These devices are also convenient for other family members to keep an eye on the body condition and check on the elderly. There are many related researches has been proposed for elderly caring with the assistant from robot. Pepper the robot, released in Japan in 2015, is able to talk with the elder and company them. However, Pepper can’t express his emotion directly by facial expression. This might be less intimate for the elder though Pepper can talk, move, and provide information searching services. In this research, Pepper’s 3D model is animated by utilizing Kinect for capturing user-defined motions. The animation is displayed on the tablet in the front of Pepper’s chest to present his emotion. Our animations replace the unchangeable robot face with interesting kaomoji expressions which are closer to our daily life experience and have better connection to our emotion.